resonance of ruin

Resonance of Ruin: Deconstructing Babel through Charcoal is a meditation on the myth of the Tower of Babel—its ambition, collapse, and ongoing relevance. Drawing on the visual language of Pieter Brueghel the Elder, the work revisits this archetypal structure through a contemporary lens, using charcoal to build a dialogue between history and the present.

The tower stands at the center, fragile and layered. Architectural elements from different periods and styles intertwine, reflecting a long arc of construction and reconstruction. Each layer bears the marks of overreach and fatigue, as if every attempt to reach upward carries the weight of those that came before. The drawing is detailed yet restrained, its surface dense with marks that echo the labor behind human ambition.

Charcoal becomes a central voice in the piece—its material qualities shaping both atmosphere and structure. The tower’s surface is rendered with a tactile softness, suggesting instability, while the darker tonal passages anchor the composition with a sense of gravity. Around the base, water spreads outward, dotted with small boats—fragments of survival, or perhaps of retreat. They carry the remnants of effort, drifting quietly beneath a structure on the edge of collapse.

What remains is not a spectacle of destruction but a study in persistence. The piece reflects on the rhythm of building and undoing, on how histories—personal, collective, architectural—layer themselves over time. It invites a quiet confrontation with the limits of intention, and with the fragile coherence of shared meaning.

Rather than retelling a myth, Resonance of Ruin positions itself within it. The work does not offer resolution. Instead, it holds space for reflection—on failure, repetition, and the ongoing human need to construct stories, places, and futures in the shadow of what has already been lost.