The Black Sun



Process

The Black Sun evolved through an intuitive, freeform process. Layers of gestural mark-making gave rise to symbols and forms. This process is explored and represented in the film The Black Sun: Mise en Abyme (Into the Abyss). The alchemical symbol of the black sun emerged through this process. Like Carl Jung’s active imagination, my freeform technique represents a dialogue with the unconscious that seeks to reveal the repressed, hidden content of both the personal and collective unconscious as part of the Jungian individuation process. This creative process is autopoietic (self-organising and self-producing), continually generating new forms through recursive engagement. The final image embodies transformation and psychic emergence.

Theoretical Framework

Intuition and control, structure and spontaneity, form a dynamic polarity. Gestural mark-making embodies chaos and the Dionysian impulse, characterised by expressiveness and unpredictability. Structured elements create a more controlled, contemplative Apollonian order. The tension between opposites reflects the friction between forces such as chaos and order, stillness and movement, conscious and unconscious. My creative practice oscillates between these poles, whether within a single work or across various stages of making, illustrated by techniques such as layering chaotic marks into structure or generating illusionistic figurative images through a slow, contemplative process; both approaches offer distinct therapeutic functions. These oscillations reflect a spiral movement rather than a closed cycle, where opposites are not resolved but continually revisited in evolving form.

Informed by Daoist philosophy, I view opposites as dynamically interdependent rather than mutually exclusive, with each giving rise to the other through transformation. The recursive nature of my work mirrors these dualities: film and painting, stillness and motion, repetition and change. Each medium reflects and reframes the other. This evolving and labyrinthine process resists linear resolution, symbolised in my practice as ascent and descent, construction and deconstruction, emergence and erosion. Spiral movement mirrors alchemical transformation, a dialectical progression in which opposites are held in tension, producing new levels of meaning and integration. This dialectical process reflects the symbolic work of individuation, where the friction between opposites fosters psychic integration. This assimilation of opposites affirms Jung’s model of the Self and the individuation process. My process symbolically and experientially expresses this concept for transforming the psyche.

Analysis of symbols and meaning

The use of black and white evokes a symbolic tension between opposites: chaos and order, Dionysian and Apollonian, unconscious and conscious. The restricted palette of black and white is a visual metaphor for the polarities that shape both inner life and external form, in alignment with Jung’s concept of the coniunctio oppositorum (conjunction of opposites) and the alchemical nigredo.

The black sun (sol niger) is an alchemical symbol associated with the nigredo, the first stage of dissolution, a darkness that precedes transformation. In this work, the black sun represents trauma, absence, and the void, from which new forms emerge. This symbolism aligns with a dialectical and spiral movement, where meaning is produced through recursive engagement with opposites embodied in my process.

This process enacts and encourages individuation, in which the Black Sun is a symbol of loss and a catalyst for psychic integration. My interest and recording of my process developed into the stop-frame animation, using photographs taken at each stage, integrated into the film The Black Sun: Mise en Abyme.