Old Road, New Path
Working on my website for some months now. Looking at my past, scrutinizing projects, and evaluating them. And then a tedious sometimes painful process of asking myself;
Why am I doing this (Art)? Do I want to do this? And if so; how do I want to do it? And then adjusting it reforming and crystalizing what I want to say and do in the coming future. And then realizing that I have done this process many times before.
But this time it seems more urgent, there is more at stake for me here.
What started in a journey to Kyiv at the end of 2013 with a project depicting Ukrainian and Russian Mothers, got me to Belarus to work on an LGBTQ project and portray refugee children on the Turkish-Syrian border. This journey took me also to high places, portraying Women leaders in the castles of power, and then was brought to an abrupt end in 2020 with covid19 and a shattered Pop-Art project about displaced Women.
I thought that I was done with art on a professional level. I have done my share of the limelight and even got paid for it. It was good while it lasted and it was time to settle down, learn a decent profession, and grow a family (both I did: Three daughters and I’m a certified Social Care Worker now).
But as it often happens in my life at the moment, when I think can let Art go, it will just smile and let me do my thing and then slap me in the face and wake me up. During the last months of 2022, I got depressed and was officially burned out. This wasn’t out of the blue but it took me by surprise in its magnitude.
As often happens in my life during the same time an Art door was opened and I got a free hand to work on a new project. Little did I know that this project has set the premise for my next journey.
Inspired by an Article that explained that: when a couple sits together with their Smartphones on, their Brains are actually transmitting loneliness, so even if they are together, they are in fact lonely. I picked up an old idea and worked on a Project about “intimacy” portraying couples and asking them about what dose intimacy means to them.
Painting these unions, and seeing them in their “intimacy” brought me back to Art as understood it; “Serving the Tribe”. The developments in the AI front and the deeper look at our relationship with technology that I gained through the project, cleared the path for the new journey to start.
In the Time to come, in a series of Projects, I will be focusing on the questions:
How do communities form?
Will we be able to form or maintain a community under the influence ever advanced “communication tools” and AI?
In an attempt to go after this question my next stop will be in November, where I’ll be painting a contemporary live version of the “Last Supper”. The basic idea is to invite 13 guests for dinner and paint them while they are following the ancient tradition of creating a communal bond and “Break-Bread” together.
Thank you for reading so far, more info will come soon…