Art Prize 2012: The Meaning Underlying the Winning Piece

Elephants, Monkeys, birds; animals big, and small, are meticulously drawn on a canvas the size of a large wall, all done in pencil. The artist Adonna Khare was born and raised in Iowa. She has been drawing since a young age, and her only tools are a pencil, eraser, and sock.

As I sit and stare deeply into the absolute depth of Khare’s piece, everything around me goes still, and the pencil drawn image comes to life. This piece looks as if it could have been pulled out of a dream. The artist creates a completely new world of imagination and the unthinkable is born. It has many strange and mysterious aspects, but what is the true meaning that lies beneath the surface?

At first glance this piece of art just looks like a well-drawn picture of animals. Looking deeper at the piece, I begin to notice odd things, if not signs of an alternative meaning behind the piece. The animals on the wall length picture are all closely packed on what appears to be an iceberg. They may not want to share this space but by doing so, they are all intertwined and connected in visible and invisible ways.

A large tree sprouts out of an elephants head, as buildings sit atop of apes. Is this representative of humans? Do we put ourselves so high above other creatures that we have begun to walk on top of them? Or are the animals the roots beneath the massive tree, interconnected? Either way these animals seem ensnared with no escape. They are trapped beneath the ground, and they are caught in a great expanse of water floating on an iceberg. Could it be humans who have placed them in this confining position? Has the world become so polluted, and dangerous for the animals that they feel safest in the middle of the ocean on a small piece of ice? Or is it that we have taken over every section of the world that once belonged to animals and this is the last place for them run? As targets, they are brought closer together, where they protect one another from falling into the depths of the sea and extinction.

I may never know the true depth of the piece, but what is clear is that this piece touched the lives of many people, which resulted in its ultimately winning the Art Prize competition. As we live in our normal world, Khare lives through her dream like pieces of art. Perhaps we will encounter another of her mystical drawings next year, but now we are left to ponder the meaning of her first creation.