It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our

Host: The city was silent under a thin mist that drifted like smoke from invisible fires. In the heart of an abandoned gallery, half of its paintings covered in dust, a single lamp hung above, its light trembling in the cold air. The walls were cracked, the floor littered with shattered frames and brushstrokes that had once meant something.

Jack stood by the window, his reflection fragmented by the broken glass, his hands tucked deep in his coat pockets. Jeeny sat cross-legged on the floor, her eyes following a shaft of light that fell across a faded portrait — a woman’s face, half erased by time.

Host: The hour was late. The silence felt alive, like it was waiting for the truth to finally speak.

Jeeny: “Oscar Wilde once said, ‘It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.’”

Jack: (smirking) “Perfection? Through art? That’s a nice illusion, Jeeny. But art doesn’t feed the hungry, or cure the sick. It’s a luxury, not a path to truth.”

Jeeny: “You think truth only lives in hospitals and markets? Art feeds the soul, Jack. It teaches us to see — not just to look. To feel — not just to exist.”

Host: Jack’s eyes narrowed, their grey coldness meeting her warm brown ones. A faint wind brushed through the broken window, carrying the faint scent of rain and dust.

Jack: “You talk like a poet, Jeeny. But what good is seeing beauty when the world is on fire? When people are losing jobs, when machines are replacing hands? You can’t paint away reality.”

Jeeny: “No, but maybe you can redeem it. Art doesn’t ignore the flames; it shows us what’s burning. Picasso’s Guernica didn’t stop the bombs, but it forced humanity to look at what it had done. That’s not escape, Jack. That’s awakening.”

Host: The lamp flickered, casting their shadows against the walls — two figures, one sharp, one soft, locked in an unseen duel.

Jack: “Awakening? Most people just take selfies next to paintings and call it culture. Art has become decoration, not revelation. Wilde lived in a world where art still had aura — today, it’s an industry.”

Jeeny: “But that’s not the fault of art, Jack. That’s our own poverty of spirit. We’ve turned beauty into content, meaning into merchandise. Yet every once in a while, a song, a film, a painting — it still shakes something inside us. That’s the perfection Wilde meant. The moment we remember what it means to be human.”

Host: The rain began to fall, slow and soft, against the roof. The sound filled the gallery like a heartbeat.

Jack: “Human? Humanity also creates wars, lies, and greed. If art is the mirror of man, then it’s just reflecting our flaws, not our perfection.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. And through that reflection, we begin to change. When Van Gogh painted his Starry Night, he wasn’t trying to escape his madness — he was trying to transcend it. That’s what art does. It turns pain into light.”

Host: Jack took a step closer. His breath was visible in the cold air, his voice low but tight.

Jack: “Transcendence is a luxury of the privileged. The rest of the world is too busy surviving to worry about beauty. Tell that to a miner working sixteen hours, or a refugee crossing the sea. You think they’re looking for perfection through art?”

Jeeny: “And yet they sing, Jack. Have you ever heard a miner’s song echo in the tunnels? Or seen a child draw with charcoal on a camp wall? Art survives because it’s all we have when everything else is gone.”

Host: A sudden gust pushed open a door at the far end of the gallery, making the lamp swing. Its light danced over the paintings, waking faces long asleep.

Jack: “You make it sound sacred.”

Jeeny: “It is sacred. Because art is the only language where both truth and beauty can speak without violence.”

Jack: “But perfection — that’s the word that bothers me. Wilde’s perfection sounds too... divine. Humans aren’t perfect, Jeeny. We’re flawed by design.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe art is the way we forgive that design. When a dancer moves, when a poet writes, when a child draws — they’re not pretending to be gods. They’re remembering what it means to be more than flesh.”

Host: Jack’s jaw tightened. His eyes dropped to the floor, where a painting lay face down, its frame cracked.

Jack: “You know, my mother used to paint,” he said quietly. “After my father died, she stopped. She said she didn’t see the point anymore. Said the world had no color left worth painting.”

Jeeny: (softly) “Maybe she was waiting for someone to remind her the world still had light.”

Host: Jack’s eyes flicked up. For the first time that night, his voice lost its edge.

Jack: “And you think art can do that? Bring back light?”

Jeeny: “It always has. Look at history — when civilizations fell, art remained. The statues, the songs, the poems — they were what survived. That’s how we know who we were.”

Host: The rain grew heavier now, drumming on the roof like a distant march. Jeeny stood, her shadow merging with Jack’s on the wall.

Jeeny: “Maybe Wilde didn’t mean that we become perfect through art, Jack. Maybe he meant that we remember the possibility of perfection — the echo of it inside us.”

Jack: “And what if that echo is just nostalgia? A trick of memory, not truth?”

Jeeny: “Then it’s the most beautiful trick we’ve ever had. Because it keeps us trying.”

Host: The lamp steadied now, its light calm and golden. Jack looked around the gallery, his gaze falling on a canvas turned toward the wall. He reached out, lifted it, and set it upright. The image revealed a landscape — a field, under a storm, with a single tree standing alone, its branches bare but unbroken.

Jack: (whispering) “Maybe she did finish one after all…”

Jeeny: “She must have still believed in something.”

Host: A long silence hung between them. Outside, the rain began to fade, leaving only the faint sound of water dripping from the eaves. The air smelled clean, new.

Jack: “You win, Jeeny. Maybe art is the last honest mirror we have left.”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. Not the last — the first. Everything else is just a reflection of it.”

Host: The camera of the night pulled back, the lamp’s glow shrinking in the darkness, until all that remained was the faint outline of two souls, standing before a painting — a man learning to see, and a woman teaching him how.

Host: And somewhere, between the shadows and the light, art whispered again what perfection might mean — not the absence of flaw, but the presence of wonder.