Emily DeLima - a star must burn

“A star must burn” refers to the scientific concept of how stars shine by generating immense energy through nuclear fusion within their cores. This process creates heat and light by fusing hydrogen into helium and is essential for a star to exist and resist collapse under its own gravity. This body of work grapples with both the difficulty yet necessity of change, using drafted lines to diagram intersecting paths on a cosmic scale.

Drawing from a quote by Carl Jung, I explore how the meeting of two people transforms both. Some people come into our lives to stay, while others arrive only to teach us before they go, but are these meetings chosen by us or divinely orchestrated?

This series explores how we are carried, changed, and reborn, blending the logic of science with the mysteries of intimacy and spirituality. Change is continuous and endings are rarely absolute.

"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed,"

-Carl jung

until we met Acrylic, oil, spray paint

exhibited in "the art of planetary science" at the university of arizona in tucson, arizona

The stars exploded long before us, scattering what we’re made of.

When we met, something in us remembered how to come back together.

"you thought the world was one way and then it wasn't. one could become zero. one could become two. a blink of an eye, and the fact of the matter was not."

r.f. kuang, "katabasis"

don't blink! Acrylic, oil, spray paint

exhibited in “As She Should” at AM:PM Gallery in Brooklyn, NY

are we the same? acrylic, oil, spray paint

“Every time you victimized someone, you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you”.

Andy Weir, "The Egg"

“That's just what translation is, I think. That's all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they're trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.”

R.F. Kuang, "babel"

Boom acrylic, spray paint

past lives acrylic, spray paint

“Anyone who fights with monsters should take care that he does not in the process become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes back into you.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil"

i see red oil, spray paint, broken cds

exhibited in “As She Should” at AM:PM Gallery in Brooklyn, NY

"but i warn you little warrior, the price of power is pain."

r.f. kuang, "the poppy war"

"what is knowledge if it only ever consumes us?"

r.f. kuang, "katabasis"

for the love of the game oil, acrylic, spray paint, broken cds

to be exhibited in “in bloom” at indigo rain Gallery in new york, NY

"Apesar do coração, ainda 'to vivo
Nunca vi tanto poder em caco de vidro
Já 'tá passando a chuva, agora é só o sereno
Eu posso ser a cura, já que sou o veneno"

BK, "cacos de vidro"

i am flesh, i am blood acrylic, collage, spray paint

exhibited in "Aura" at AM:PM Gallery in Brooklyn, NY

we fell together acrylic, spray paint

awake acrylic, spray paint, collage on stretched denim

"So what we call astronomy is the knowledge of the workings of love, as these affect the movements of the stars and the seasons of the year."

plato, "the symposium"

until we meet again, in this life or the next.

Until we meet again acrylic, oil, spray paint

“Picture a wave in the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through, and it’s there, and you can see it, you know what it is. It’s a wave. And then it crashes on the shore, and it’s gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be for a little while. That’s one conception of death for a Buddhist. The wave returns to the ocean. Where it came from, and where it’s supposed to be.”

—Chidi to Eleanor (The Good Place)