Shadow is an absence of light. Without shadow, we would not be able to visually understand about 3D spaces. Shadow shows its importance as an absence.
Stay is a twelve-min video that explores the presence of absence. In the video, the character is affected and influenced by different people’s shadows, which represent absence. Although people do not appear as physical form, their presence stays. Their impacts are conveyed through the character’s interaction with the shadow, along with the text in the silhouettes that forms a complementary-coloured contrast with the surrounding. A voice also reads the texts inside the shadow to heighten their presence.
Stay asks viewers to encounter the presence of absence. Its image and sound push viewers to pay attention, to think, and to question about people’s silhouettes as an active form. The ambiguous shadows are intended to leave imagination about who the people in silhouettes are and what the story is about. The shadows could be about lovers, families, friends, childhood, growth, work, stress, dream, trace, memory, emotions, psychology, conscious and subconscious, split personalities, and many more. Viewers could have different connection and interpretation with the piece depending on their own background and experience.