Perfect imperfection (SOLD)

48″ x 24″ x 1.5″ acrylics on canvas.

“Chaos is a friend of mine.” – Bob Dylan

“Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.” – Confucius

Normative aesthetic ideals demand perfection and symmetry. Cultural emancipation may come from principles found in non-Western philosophies that reveal beauty in imperfection. Wabi-sabi acclaims beauty in common irregularity, while kintsugi celebrates beauty in visible signs of repair, like scars, cracks, fractures. These principles resist pressure to control chaos and to deny the imperfections of nature and humanness and instead invite us to expand and our aesthetic and moral preferences and choices.

Expectations of perfection are normalized both culturally and politically. The book ‘Seeing Like a State’ by political scientist James C. Scott (1988) has always stuck with me because of how it charts so clearly the failure of human endeavours to control the chaos of nature. The book examines failed attempts at large top-down authoritarian-style social planning such as the Great Leap Forward in China, collectivization in Russia, urban planning of Brasilia, and the compulsory Ujamaa villages in Tanzania. A primary conclusion is that successful life involves complex relationships and local, informal knowledge—the imperfect aspects of life that give us the freedom to thrive.

In one of my courses, I show my students the film ‘This Changes Everything’ by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis. It’s a film about climate change (it’s a bit outdated now, so I’m looking for new suggestions!) and offers instructive examples of how power operates in different ways and on different levels—from the explicit use of force to insidious ideological normalization. The film suggests that for the past 250-300 years or so, humans have believed a story that humans could control nature and use it for their sole benefit. This story has, as we know, produced a world that prioritizes such exploitations of land and its resources over the local, informal knowledge of people who live on that land.

But film’s concluding message is inspiring. People in all their diverse manifestations have the power to effect change when we come together and act—we can stop trying to control nature and instead we can prosper by celebrating and honouring the chaos and wildness of nature, the perfect imperfection of nature.