Trickster's tree
Etching, Aquatint and Drypoint
40 cm x 50 cm
This project is a series of twelve original etching prints working as an installation altogether. The subject matter of these images is based on the Trickster Jungian Archetype.
The Trickster is a powerful motif appearing in every culture through the ages.
In the psychological and anthropological aspects, Jung suggests the Trickster portrays the resistance of the unconscious to the challenges of social moral development, creating a tension in the psyche between the good and bad.
The Trickster possesses a dual nature, exceeding what is human, this archetype has magical, superhuman potencies, but also subhuman and animal ones. The Trickster can be recognized in folklore wisdom, tales and carnival figures, tracing the forms of original demonic creatures associated with the archetype of The Shadow. Both motifs closely related, recreate a spiritual journey where The Trickster passes through The Shadow, allowing one to know the unknown about oneself.
The figure of The Trickster expresses some kind of compensation for the requirement of high demands of moral development. He provides all the wildness, wantonness, and irresponsibility of paganism expressed through culture and mythology, in games, carnivals, and rituals.
The Trickster can be both subhuman and superhuman, a bestial and divine being, whose chief and most alarming characteristic is his unconsciousness and wittiness in the service of his own good. He violates principles of the social and natural order, playfully disrupting normal life and then re-establishing it on a new basis.