Harassed – The Hummingbird (2024), acrylic on canvas, 72 × 102 cm, 2024, black frame

Description

Harassed – The Hummingbird (2024) unfolds as a théâtre intérieur in which the psyche is suspended between rupture and resistance. 

The composition captures a soul in état de choc, hovering in an impossible stillness while existential forces swirl like a storm intent on shredding its last coherence. At the center, a burst of paint erupts like a petrified scream—half human, half elemental—revealing a face trapped between terror and transcendence. Around it churn wave‑forms and beast‑like apparitions, embodying the unconscious machinery of fear. 

These are not merely shapes, but forces: sociological pressures, psychological intrusions, and existential threats converging into one turbulent field. Against all probability, the hummingbird appears—fragile, precise, trembling yet immovable. 

Traditionally a symbol of agility and rebirth, here it becomes a psychic totem of survival: not fleeing, not fighting, but enduring through suspension. Electric zigzags slice through the image like fractured EEG readings; surreal vectors curve and distort perception; chromatic ruptures create a spatial dislocation that mirrors the internal fragmentation of trauma. 

The canvas becomes a battlefield of competing energies—une cartographie de la douleur et de la résistance (a map of pain and resistance). In this work, Prijon explores the paradox of grace under psychological violence. The hummingbird incarnates the survival strategy of trauma: the frozen moment in which consciousness protects itself through stillness so precise it becomes a form of defiance. 

Harassed – The Hummingbird is thus a poetic anatomy of endurance: trembling, luminous, wounded, and profoundly human.