THE WARRIOR EMPATH
Accentuation of the collective unconscious and its sublimation into a cultural montage
The Semiotics of the Empathic Collective
The Warrior Empath marks the second exhibition in Paris by Vedica Art Studios and Gallery. The exhibition investigates the intensification of the collective unconscious and its transformation into a cultural montage through works by Arie Otten (Netherlands), Carol Hartman (USA), Joas Nebe (Germany), Miriam Fabjan (Canada), Colette Leinman (Israel), Susan Fraser-Hughes (Canada), Dorron Britz (UK), and Rajul Shah (Singapore).
Curated by Dorron Britz, the exhibition extends Carl Jung’s notion of the collective unconscious into the contemporary art context. Britz explores the idea of radical reaction as an empathetic recourse—an emotional and psychological response formed through the recognition of another’s aphasic or fragmented state. His curatorial design dissolves conventional spatial and formal hierarchies, allowing each artwork to function as both an autonomous and referential entity. This approach dematerializes the separation among individual artistic dialects, emphasizing empathy as the generative force that connects the collective psyche.
Britz situates the viewer as an essential participant in the interpretive process. Meaning emerges not only from observation but through embodied engagement—through movement, perception, and presence. Visitors encounter Untethered by Miriam Fabjan upon entry, a series that celebrates the act of acknowledging another’s existence. Within the gallery’s structure, the viewer’s own presence is reflected in sculptures, drawings, and oil paintings, positioning perception as a key element of the exhibition’s discourse.
The theoretical foundation of the show recalls Jung’s challenge to the Freudian model of the individual unconscious. Artists such as Karel Appel of the COBRA movement fused abstraction and figuration to restore meaning to modern art, a lineage continued by Arie Otten. Often called the Donatello of Vedica Gallery, Otten draws on Cobra aesthetics and the Faux-Naïf sensibility. His series Your Red Lips, created with pigments derived from dried blood, channels his experience in emergency medicine to express empathy through transformation. The series traces his evolution from deconstructive to reconstructive relationships, reflecting a passage from fragmentation toward healing.
Rajul Shah’s geometric abstractions—Acceptance, Becoming, Evermore, and Knowing—extend this dialogue through the Japanese philosophy of Kintsugi. Her compositions, marked by golden seams and chakra-inspired tones, represent resilience through restoration. Britz places Shah’s works beside Carol Hartman’s monumental Even in the Marshes, a blue-hued meditation on environmental disruption. Together, the two artists’ works form a visual dialogue on the relationship between damage, recovery, and collective responsibility.
Colette Leinman’s suspended textile banners further embody the interconnectedness of empathy within a collective framework. Their placement transforms the gallery into a symbolic gathering of “empathetic warriors,” uniting individuality and collective acknowledgment. Britz’s own works, placed in dialogue with Leinman’s, translate inner emotional movement into fields of color that visualize empathy as an expanding force.
Susan Fraser-Hughes closes the exhibition with her series Just a Moment, a body of work confronting identity and absence. Her faceless mannequins reflect the performative anonymity of modern existence, transforming multiplicity into a singular sculptural statement. This multi-perspectival approach reinterprets Michelangelo’s David as a contemporary reflection on fragmentation and the struggle for self-definition.
Ultimately, The Warrior Empath transcends its role as an art exhibition to become an inquiry into empathy as both an aesthetic and psychological phenomenon. Under Dorron Britz’s curatorial vision, the gallery evolves into a site of consciousness, dialogue, and transformation. Each artist contributes a distinct voice to the shared language of emotion and perception, inviting the viewer not only to observe but to participate—to become, in essence, the empathic witness within the collective human experience.
Works Exhibited
