Exhibitions / Liquid Paralysis
Liquid Paralysis
(2025)
How shall we grapple with our fear of darkness? How are we to master self in the face of mania and depression? It is a struggle, one that Elke Debortoli has taken on without compromise, smearing it across pages in the anthology, Liquid Paralysis. It is a struggle informed by the “lack of awareness of our collective mental health.”
Elke is courageous. She challenges my natural response to force truth into a closet by saying, “Hey, darkness doesn’t exist!” Yet that response will not serve. By personal example, Elke has accepted extreme discomfort inherent in embracing “fear and attraction in equal measures” and doing so, takes our hand to assure us, ‘You will be all right, you’re alive!’
In this anthology, Elke transforms stark reality into whimsical words. Often brutal, sometimes mystical, she transports the reader into her own secret universe.
I hold Liquid Paralysis to my breast and though it scares me, I know it will be all right. Liquid Paralysis, illuminated with frightful paintings in very liquid acrylics by Erik Schnack.
– Don Stevenson: Poet, English-language copy editor, illustrator, sometime actor
This anthology of poetry and prose, powerfully complemented by the energetic brush of Erik Schnack, evokes the poet’s own retreat and contemplation of the self, place, life and time. Through art and poetry, what is hidden in the human mind is made manifest.
Albert Einstein opined that, “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science”, and for Harper Lee in his evocative To Kill a Mockingbird, the ultimate authority is a person’s conscience.
In Liquid Paralysis, both poet and artist are absorbed in the stirrings of the intuitive imagination. This is poetry, prose and art with compassion, imagination and dedication, written and painted with warmth and dignity of feeling.
– André du Pisani: Emeritus Professor of Politics, poet and photographer