Leo Bagus Purnomo

The Three Realms of Understanding: Embracing the Ineffable explores the concepts of race and ethnicity through mysticism – the practice of connecting with supernatural entities, a greater truth, or another plane of existence. By interweaving mystic beliefs with phenomenology and posthumanism, I seek to counteract the ‘disenchantment’ of Western societies – an overemphasis on empiricism, rationalism, and secularism. This project foregrounds the vast unknown, not merely as a horizon for further knowledge but as a crucial element in our conceptions of identity, selfhood, and reality itself. It highlights the expansive interiority of the self, suggesting that the social constructs of race and ethnicity are not illusionary – unreal and deceptive – but rather allusionary, reductive representations of things we cannot fully grasp or articulate.