Embryonia (2007)

A bedraggled little lamb, its four legs tied together, lies still on a (sacrificial?) altar, its eyes registering nothing, as if resigned to its fate. This image, from the oil painting ‘Agnus Dei’ by Francisco de Zurbaran (1598-1664), stopped me in my tracks as I wandered the galleries of the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain. Forcibly, undeniably, I saw in it the predicament of ordinary Thai citizens—indeed, of all the citizens of all the nations of the world. People living in the midst of conflict and war, in the throes of greed and thirst—be they economic, political, religious or cultural. People who are raised from infancy to follow the instructions of their cowardly rulers, to grow up with the worship of false beliefs, to become self-centred, prejudiced and resentful toward others; to love only their own kind. In effect, ready to become ‘loyal subjects’, ‘nationalists’, ‘terrorists’, suicide-bombing ‘martyrs’, and ‘shopaholics’. People grow old without gaining spiritual wisdom and emotional depth, without maturity. We become obscene overgrown infants, ever obedient to society’s dictatorship of lies.