 This performance is made with the artworks "Awake", painting and clay sculpture, and the text "Anima". It is a part of a bigger body of work called Make soup/Make art. As inspiration for this performance, two women, Clarissa Pinkola Estes and her book Woman running with wolves, and Julia Monning, friend and performer. Audio text transcript : ANIMA The kids had been gone for 4 days and half when she started to recognise a glimpse of something that felt like herself waking up in her body. Something she hadn’t felt in a long time. The anima, the soul of the ancient wild woman, coming back to her. She knew it was gone, and she is been searching for it desperately. She knew it lies hidden somewhere in between creation and rest, she kept trying to contact it. But this time, it felt like deep in her body, somethings shifted, something that felt like home, but like an ancient home, a cave, a sparkle that can start a fire. It was so fragile but yet it was there, it was alive, something too abstract to even name properly, it doesn’t matter. It was a sensation to grab onto. It has been long gone, inaccessible, here all this time but far away at the same time, untouchable. And she was grieving it. It wasn’t the children’s fault. not at all. She loves them to death and beyond and knows and proclaim, kids are kids. Alive. No, it is not to have children the problem. It was the society she was thinking about. The society that left her alone after her postpartum. The society that stole her husband everyday. Society letting her with domestic endless work, emotional load, insecurities and other demons to deal with on her own most of the time. Society telling her she wasn’t enough and she needed to keep going, do more and be stronger. Society that ripped her off the basic needs she had, of community, support, and a feeling of safety in her own body. Society that taught her so well when she was really young to handle the pressure and apply it herself on her own mind and body, and be nice. So nice that she won’t know when her boundaries are crossed, because, she has to smile, and be nice. So nice that she will while being sick or burnout, try to think of everyone’s emotions before hers. “I liked it better when you were nice he said” “Being nice is not helping me” Everyone was taught very well their place at a young age. And they lived happily ever after while they spent their lives trying to forget it.  Not so long ago I got interviewed by a local newspaper. They wanted to make a portrait of me because of the artistic involvementI have been having in the community where I live. The article was nice, and in some ways, probably representing me. But in many ways, It just felt too fake, well to me at least. Because it was so polished, or showed a very polished side of me. The good girl. The one I don't want to be anymore. And it almost made me feel angry, or sad I don't know, because it is so hard to be seen for yourself in this world. Anyway, some details that I would have accentuated because they were really me where not in the article and some very insignificant things where taking the focus. And I mean, I get it, this is the point of a local newspaper, they have an angle and are not a literary feminist magazine. So I am not mad at them. But part of my felt bothered. Is everybody seeing me like this ? argggh. So, when I got the task to create a self portrait at my new school, I thought I`ll ask myself : Who I am today, or even more : what am I today ? for real. And the answer came unexpected : an onion. That's why I love art. Because it gives you the possibility to talk about what words can't express. At least for me. So here is the full installation process ( the video is my on social media) and a few words that went rounds in my head while conceptualizing this installation : Bon Appétit ! Excerpt : intemporality of a traditional self portrait vs temporality of our beings, always changing. outside / inside, superficiality/authenticity. layers, LAYERS. Nice and shiny, hidden and complex. Some days onion some days chocolate cake. glitter to make yourself loved and beautiful outside. but do you scream inside ? Smokescreen / golden cage. beetroot juice as love. love you can drench your inside with, every day. Playful to compensate with the heaviness.  
Small things helps me hang on at the moment. Beauty in small details, moments. A tea with herbs from the garden, an embrace from my kid, an art piece from an artist friend of a friend. Step after step. I feel sick but I am not. I have fever from the apathy of the humanity in face of its own destruction. Pain in the back and the legs, like if melancholy rolls itself around my bones and muscles. Muzzles everything to silence and stillness. A scream that can’t go out. Hard to move, hard to do. Need to move, need to do. And though nothing. I don’t create, unless it is food. Cakes and farmer dishes. Sometimes in a manic way, like a lot. I don’t create, I feel stuck. But I am in observation, in absorption. I see as I write those lines the pattern gets visible. The pattern of having to surrender to the painful unknown of what is happening to me. And it is unpleasant. It makes me anxious, my body is weird and low, I imagine hundreds of diseases I could have. But the worse is to have this intrusive thought that I will drop dead and my kids will have no mother in this fucked up world. This one I know it well, it comes and goes since forever. This state is a combination of my own background story, physical and emotional. Young years of trying to be the reasonable and a good girl, an abusive relationship, burnouts, pregnancies, expatriation (plural), family baggages, daily struggles ( the ones we all know very well). We all have that “thing” that we work through in life. Often starting around the end of our 20s. Some kind of individuation process according to Jung. Individuation is the central theme of Jungian psychology. Within this process, an individual goes from being a fragmented piece to a unique whole. Jung believed that we are all fragmented and divided -and knowingly or not- we're all searching for our souls. This "inward turn" initiates the individuation process. If we don't do this work consciously, life finds a way to force it on us. That's the thing about the psyche: what we repress doesn't go away. It shows up in other forms- anxiety, depression, conflict, projection. It spills into our marriages, friendships, and even random encounters, like a road rage moment that feels, afterward, absurdly out of proportion but also somehow inevitable. Jung also spoke of the collective unconscious : the idea that we're not only grappling with our own personal shadows, but also the tensions of the culture and time we live in. It's no wonder, then, that so many of us feel like we're vibrating with barely suppressed frustration, fear, sadness. We carry personal and collective burdens, and unless we bring them into the light of consciousness-through reflection, dialogue, creativity— they erupt in ways that feel uncontrollable and bewildering. * So maybe I am since several month in an individuation phase that hits a bit harder than my past ones. No wonder with the collective full blow up right now. But for my creative process, does it have to be that way in order for me to work through my next phase? Is that one particularly so painful because the subjects and content it holds is unbearable. Bodies reduced to flesh and dust by greed and lust for power. Suffering beyond suffering. And the worst, the apathy of our kind. As I only can work from what I experience and feel deep within, I am bound to start a conversation with the public from the truth, my truth, our collective truth. And right now and until forever it will include collective liberation. But how creatively will that unfold? I have done things and will continue but right now this plateau is not as easy to navigate as I thought. There is no direct fast solution to unlock the frustration and stillness I am in right now, just tiny steps, patience and understanding from my close ones, artworks and mindful creativity from others. Words and music. This art jewellery is from an artist I follow called Sina Suai from the collective Moder Skavet. It is made with Japanese glass pearls. It really helped me the pas days. Art is just a door to what you need. You don’t need to try to hard, you just know. Sharing also this beautiful album from Adrianne Leker " Bright Future". A perfect balance of poetry and rawness. * Sourced from different websites and books about Carl Jung psychology work.
I have been writing notes and thoughts for myself for many many years. As a way to unload, process, start a conversation with my own person.
Sometimes it just stays in note in my phone or computer or even inside the enormous amount of half written notebooks I own. Sometimes it becomes more and will slowly develop into the beginning or the red thread of an artwork, a performance or even a full exhibition concept. But why share them now ? I have been reading lately blogs and letters of friends and also from women that I don’t know personally, and it has helped me. It has helped me relativize, laugh, project, process, develop, heal. Reading voices of other women help me go through this mad and wonderful thing that’s life. So here I thought, eventually that can be useful to someone. Maybe my chaos can actually make sense to someone else. Here it is, my take on everything and nothing. What I see and feel through the lens being an artist, a woman, an expat, a wife, a daughter and everything else in between and who I am not yet. It is raw and completely unpolished, I am not a writer, but Ill try my best to be a good conversation friend. Ps: english is not my first langage so pardon my mistakes. But I will write like I am. just not perfect. |
