Date of Award

Spring 5-31-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

Illustration

First Advisor

Susan Doyle

Second Advisor

Mairead Byrne

Abstract

In this fast-paced, information-saturated era, avoidance has become a common mechanism of self-preservation. Confronted with global crises and structural instability, the current generation increasingly adopt a pessimistic stance toward the future: some retreat into virtual worlds, others find themselves unable to bear the weight of real-life responsibilities, and many turn to art as a private sanctuary. But is avoidance only a pejorative term?

It wasn’t until recently that I realized, nearly all of my creative work has stemmed from a place, or an action of escape. The imagined worlds I’ve built, the spaces I created to flee from reality—without knowing it, they became a symbolic language of my own. The human tendency to escape is not merely a response to psychological stress—it has, in subtle ways, fueled both material progress and the evolution of spiritual and cultural life.

If avoidance is, at first, an emotional defense mechanism, what happens when it is transformed into an initiative, a strategy of survival—a form of escapism? Might such a shift, paradoxically, open a path toward new meaning?

This thesis does not seek to offer definitive answers but rather arises from ongoing self-inquiry: perhaps when we choose to flee dominant narratives and assigned identities, we are already walking the path of reconstruction. In the journey of flight, individuals may quietly weave together a symbolic system of their own—one that, from a marginal position, gestures toward a renewed possibility of being.

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