Disobedient Honesty, 2015 

by Kevin Yates

archival digital print

24 x 18 in (61 x 46 cm) unframed

edition of 10

Snakes and Ladders is one of the oldest board games. Originally an Indian game, it was adapted in the Victorian era and used to teach children about morals.

The titles for the works come directly from early Snakes and Ladders boards and the combinations of these sin and virtuous morals as titles are meant to question the narrative elements within these wallpaper images. These titles are not unlike the naming of paint colours, created to both tell colour shades apart with a name, but also to set up highly personal connotations, turning the colour from a nameless combination of pigments into something that is itself to be cherished for some mysterious quality (imposed by the name). There is both a tension and a harmony within the work that relates to a similar harmony in life, mirroring both the struggles against and constructed strategies to deal with threats or conflicts, imagined or real. Each title combination implies the ambiguous state of affairs one arrives at after a futile attempt to counter a perceived “sinful” way with a “virtuous” one, creating a new state that is possibly disastrous and always ambiguous even if well-intentioned.