My inspiration for this piece of work was the artwork ‘What would you do if these crackers were real pistols?’ By FX Harsono in 1977.Harsono was born in 1949, Biktar, East Java, where he grew up. He absolutely loved going to art exhibitions. Harsono's answer to this question was, ‘I would shoot my teacher’, he claims that his teacher kicked him out of his art school. This piece gets the viewer to consider entering violence by asking a simple question. There was a desk and a notebook which is where people put their answers. The work represents a political statement which happened to be against Indonesia's President’s authoritarian new order regime. I enjoyed how the artwork really makes me think about how much effect it can have if the crackers were real pistols and all the possibilities that it could hold for the world, both good and bad.
The number I have chosen is 202 as it is the year rice crackers were invented was 202 BC. I decided to add red splatters at the top and make it smoother and neater at the bottom to represent the different possibilities of what could happen if the crackers were real pistols. I decided to use the back of the paintbrush to make the white dots at the bottom, which makes it look more neat. And I used black circular stencils diagonally to split the canvas in half. As you can see one half is a bit less neat which represents what life could be like if the guns were used for bad, and one neat side covered in more flowers and 202 in pink instead of blood red, to represent what life would be like if the guns were used for good.