Have you ever experienced waking up from a random dream, instantly trying to look for an interpretation of the dream, desire to understand the message behind the dream while it was still fresh in your mind?
Freud’s theory of consciousness defined three levels of mind, including the conscious mind, the preconscious mind, and the unconscious mind. Freud compared the human mind to an iceberg.
He believed that the conscious mind is like the tip of an iceberg, only showing explicit behavior; while the rest of humans’ inner values are deep as the whole-body iceberg under the sea, under the visible.
How the masses understand themselves is just the tip of the iceberg, but their day-by-day decisions mostly depend on their subconscious. Freud believed that dreams are the gateway into a person’s unconscious mind; maybe by interpreting a dream, could provide us a key into the door for understanding our true face in the subconscious.
Throughout history, the dream has been a big subject of different artists’ creations. During the surrealist era, Surrealists wanted to illustrate their dream on canvas, big number of them even took drugs to make their dream clearer. They believed only the unity between dream and reality is the actual truth. By merging the abstract messages from the dream and reality, to create their view of the world.
Until now, the dream is still an indispensable part of an artist creative journey. From the perspective of psychology, interpreting a dream will still need the dreamer him/herself to do it. Placing dreams and the subconscious on the canvas and blending them with their self-conscious, might be a unique way for artists to interpret their dream.
SCG’s coming art salon has invited Ant, artist; Chan Sai Lok, both artist and art critic and Sarah Luk, professional consultant, department of educational psychology of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, using the sight of artist and psychologist, to explore the world of art, dream, and subconscious.
