Shame and Guilt: When the Outside Speaks to the Inside

Shame and guilt cannot be clearly located. They emerge in a boundary layer between inside and outside, where social norms, power relations, and personal experience intertwine. As emotions, they are as much rooted in the body as they are culturally produced, shaped by gazes, rules, and expectations.

Shame arises in the moment of visibility, when the self becomes a deviation in the eyes of others. Guilt points to order, responsibility, and collective narratives. Both emotions are not fixed states but processes. The outside inscribes itself into the inside, while the inside acts outward.

Abstract painting engages with these processes through the layering and condensation of color and form. The image functions as a liminal space in which shame and guilt are negotiated as processes between visibility and withdrawal.