In fact I feel more like a researcher trying to find the truth about herself, her uniqueness and her art fingerprint. For me art is a kind of meditation where I reach the inner self.
Each painting is not only a scene. It’s a journey through my deep self.
I believe that the reason we are here as humans on earth is to try and reach our inner selves.
Was there a particular moment in your life that you felt an artistic awakening?
As a child I was slow to develop my speech and writing abilities. I always favoured drawing. Even at school, I used to sneak out of classes and go to the drawing room instead. Since I came to the realization of this art world, I can’t believe for a second that I can work in any other career.
How did your teachers assist in the development of your artistic practice?
My teacher is called Bassem. He taught me that my only teachers in life should be myself and books. He used to tell me that he is only there to encourage and guide me. By the time I started studying art at university, he had already left teaching because of the war conditions and had gone to another university. In order to reach him, I had to walk for miles, just to have him look at my work. His opinion was more important to me than the mark I received.
Your mother is one of your recurring subjects. How did she influence your creativity and personality?
She was a teacher of mathematics in the same school that I attended. She used to come and check on me during the day, any time she didn’t find me in the class. She would take me from the drawing-room. She used to get angry at my begging her to relent, but after a while she understood my nature and began providing me with materials and even booked me into art classes. She was always talking to me as a unique person and saying that when choosing anything I should follow my heart. She used to energize me mentally and physically. My mother used to help me prepare canvases before I started painting, organise my studio and tidy it up in a way that didn’t distress me. She always tried to interpret my work and was always happy with my achievements. More than I ever was.
Ultimately, she is the reason I am here now.
Which of your works do you feel best represents your oeuvre?
There are two of them in particular. The first is one of a woman sitting down, painted with two colours only and a font. It’s painted in a highly impressionistic way. I completed this work in 2021.
The second painting shows a social gathering for two women painted in a sketched style with warm neutral colours. I made this in 2016.
In what way does politics enter your art?
On account of my lack of freedom in expressing myself, and because the media doesn’t always show the more interesting angles in the news, I decided to reveal my nation’s suffering in my own distinctive way, through my art.
Damascus is always appearing in your work and your thoughts, would you like to say something about this city?
Damascus was the capital of the Umayyads, the dream of Abbasids, and is one of the oldest capital cities of the Islamic world.
In spite of the war, I felt safe walking down its alleys and roads. This is not an ordinary city. It holds a lot of energy. Looking at the ancient monuments, I used to feel its greatness. I represent Damascus as a lady who has faced hardship through the years, but has managed to preserves an elegance. One day prosperity will return, as has occurred throughout the city’s history, for it possesses a wealth of energy.
Has any artist from history had a particular influence on you?
I like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, Honoré Daumier and Egon Schiele.
What particular technique is at core of your practice?
Sketching. I like the strong impression of a sketch. I find myself attracted more to the expressive school, through the use of neutral translucent colours and heavy fonts.
Have you integrated other disciplines or artistic forms into your painting?
No, but in my first year of university I studied five general artistic fields. I liked sculpture and engraving, especially Honoré Daumier works. I think one day I will study this discipline more deeply.
I particularly love your paintings portraying people commuting and traveling. What is so enticing for you about these subjects?
Regarding the painting of the bus scenes, when I start painting, I always ask myself why I am doing it? When I used to take the bus, I watched people gazing out the windows, some were angry but couldn’t express themselves, and some were looking over their shoulders as if they were waiting for time to go back.
I felt it was not a bus, but a boat taking us away from our country and away from our present and making us live in the past. Then I started painting it again. I wanted to apologise, but somehow I was painting to say that what happened wasn’t our faults.
In future I want to make fingerprint through my art. I want my paintings to be alive so I can live through them. Not for a moment have I felt that I am Picasso or Goya. They are dead. But when I looked at their paintings, I always felt that I am talking to them.
Kindly translated by Jennifer Boktor and Nermine Abdel Malak
Manar is preparing for a new exhibition in September in Rathfarnham Castle, and recently moved to the Lodge Studio with the organisation Common Ground.
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Oscar Wilde said that the tragedy of being old is that one is still young.
I am eighty-six, going on nineteen. Is this a record?
I’ve been pruning and wood carving with my chainsaw for years. There is no shortage of wood from the trees that I planted thirty years ago. The resultant grotesque heads are visible all around my garden (all wearing face masks – you must keep a sense of humour). Now they mock me.
In the week before Christmas I took out my chain saw to clear away two full-grown pine trees that had fallen on our oil tank.
Everything went well until I became ambitious. For the first time, instead of placing the machine on the ground with my foot on it, I tried to start it as they do in the movies: hold the machine in my left hand, push it down while pulling up on the starter with the right hand. That’s what the pros do. I had never tried it before.
The result was dramatic. There was a sharp crunch in my left shoulder, plus pins and needles in my hand. A month later that is still my painful condition.
On that day before Christmas I admitted for the first time that I’m old and it got me thinking about the disparities between age and youth.
Demographically speaking, we oldies will soon outnumber youngsters. This is because young females are postponing reproduction until their mid-thirties. The costs of childcare and housing are prohibitive, there is a lack of confidence in the future. Also, many want an independent career. It’s a first world scenario.
Women traditionally reproduced at about 25 years of age. Now it’s their mid-thirties and two kids are the ideal. However, since 1981 the worldwide replacement rate for us humans is down to 1.58 kids per woman. Ultimately that is not enough to prevent the extinction of the race.
Demographics is destiny
Thanks to modern medicine we superannuated oldies will soon outnumber fit young workers; the latter group’s taxes keep our health service going. We non-taxpayers (if you overlook VAT) will soon consume over 50% of health costs.
Will this trend continue? Probably. The young don’t vote enough. The seniors vote early and sometimes often. Governments know that older voters tend towards the status quo and shape their manifestos accordingly. This ensures that conservative policies preserve existing evils as distinct from liberal policies which wish to replace such evils with others. In the end the government always wins.
We used to worry about overpopulation in the world; now we are in reverse gear, or at least the wealthy West is. I’ve cooperated in the production of six children, so I can’t really be blamed.
But the centre cannot hold.
The gaps in the supply services, witnessed by the shortage of truck drivers during the pandemic, are a symptom of the new malaise. Older skilled workers are retiring with few to take their place. Employers are desperate for employees.
Don’t worry, I hear, the immigrants will eventually make up the numbers. Already they are the prime carers – for us, the oldies! Now a world of opportunity is there for immigrants (and about time too). Instead of denigrating them, fighting to keep them out, we will have to compete for their services, especially the skilled tradesmen.
How many of us can fix a puncture, replace a fuse, stop a leak, change a tyre, do any of the tasks that were once second nature to my generation? Very few. We have all become a dysfunctional, middle-class burden on the young and fit. Have we passed on these humble skills? No, the young have been too absorbed in their screens to learn such mundane tasks. Now we don’t repair; we replace with newer models which are programmed to break down after the guarantee expires. Thanks to the advertising industry the world of the consumer is chasing its tail. Everybody knows.
Is this an argument for despair? Not at all. Some oldies have opted for the Zurich solution but most of us will cling on desperately to the last vestiges of our functionality.
Unless euthanasia and trips to Zurich become mandatory…
Featured Images: Carvings by Boby Quinn: ‘De Profundis’; ‘After Brancusi’; ‘Me Worry’.
My work begins with a consideration of how one begins to look – an exercise of empathy with you, dear reader. When a work of art is placed in front of me, I have a whole range of responses as a viewer and I remember this when I start to make a new piece. I consider my role as artist and I consider your role as reader/viewer equally. They stand on an equal footing, a plateau.
Poem #11. Tomato Poetry House Series. 2021.
I have a friend who calls me to talk about artists and their work. We have categories for types of artists:
The magicians, who are all about persona, their work changes or improves your life and your life was lacking until their work fixed it – think Joseph Beuys, Marina Abromovic; the factors, those whose work is inspired by or responds to something that already happened – think Goshka Macuga, Aslan Gasimov; the intelligentsia, who make you feel like you’ll never be smart enough to understand their supersoaked insights – think Seth Price, Micol Assael; and the decor (I’ll let you figure that one out).
There are more categories that we invent as time goes on, but the purpose serves well, to open our critical and loving heads to talking art. We analyze and consider different artists and their trajectories, what they’re putting out now versus a few years ago, and where they might go down the line. The thing that stands out most, for me, is that I have been all four different types at some stage, and indeed, the more I talk about it with other artists, the more confirmations I get that the same applies to them.
The Ella who showed the work ‘Anemic Circles’ at The Emergency Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of 2013 is different from the Ella who had a solo show ‘Flat as the Tongue Lies’ at The University of California in 2018, is different from the Ella writing this text. I have grown as a human and as such my work has grown too. Some of my furies have tempered into cooler flames, while some of my damp wood has dried into a patient but furious kindle. The one anchored point however, is the work.
Act II. Flat As The Tongue Lies. UCLA Irvine, California. 2018.
I have always been fascinated with the viewing process. How ‘we’ (-who’s we?) act as ‘viewer,’ and how ‘we’ learnt to look that way, both as an individual and a community. Coming from Ireland, I am always in awe of the GAA and how in a relatively short space of time a structure was created whereby every family in every town had access to play hurling and/or football, to view it and to participate in critical conversation with peers, of analysis, predictions and strategy. The same could be done with art.
Choir (Haar). Kunstenfeest Watou. 2021. Photo by Dirk Pauwels.
With gestures, sculpture and poetry, I create performative work that combs through these issues. Coming from the position of being a cis-female, white woman I am inspired by the history of womanhood, the struggles, the victories. I have an imaginary coven who I sporadically turn to for strength, inspiration and help. Some have names, such as Biddy Early, Hildegaard of Bingen, Cassandra and Joan of Ark, and some don’t, such as the women in the Magdalene Laundries.
During the pandemic I heard on the radio that the women lace makers of Headford, Galway were not affected by cholera and typhoid during the 19th Century because they had to wash their hands so often. The money they earned was crucial to their families and if there was one speck of dirt on the lace piece then it would be worthless.
Choir (Doh Soh). Newbridge House. 2021. Photo by Louis Hawk.
I was in awe and in shock to think about how a century after these industrious women making money from lace to feed their families, there came 20th century women who were torn away from their families and incarcerated in the Magdalene Laundries, set to work knotting lace, string after string – maybe even listening to radio programmes about women from Headford, Galway while they worked.
Now we’re here in the 21st Century, and women’s labour is still underpaid, often unpaid, and the labouring women unseen, unheard. A person’s voice is a source of great power, and those who gain from suppressing that power have spent centuries sewing throats shut. Landlords, priests, politicians, misogynists, the cast of characters hasn’t changed.
Lettuce Síle. 2021
I created a cast of embroidered throats standing in the gesture that fans out from headless sackcloth bodies. The headless straw women, disembodied anatomies, could represent the Headford women making lace or the Magdalene women incarcerated in the laundries, they could be representations of viewers today observing the work or they could be me.
These voiceless throats and sightless spectators are woven into a spatial, figurative, yet ambiguous relation of dependence and power. Some of this body of work was shown in ‘Guest’ at Newbridge House, Fingal, during the Summer of 2021, a group show curated by Marysia Wieckiewicz-Carroll, while other parts were shown at the Kunstenfestival Watou, in Belgium, curated by Chantal Pattyn and Benedicte Goesaert.
Tomtom’s (watercolour and tomatoes) 2021.
During the Summer I also grew my own tomatoes and read feminist poems to them. You are what you eat. I would prefer to eat food that does not prop up the poisonous economic structure so harmful to our environment. These tomatoes became my audience during the pandemic, conditioned by my tastes, my carefully curated poetry show. And when they were ripe, I ate them under the full moon.
Vodka Blue Pope. (Watercolour, eggshells and Lunaria annua) 2021
More recently I have been imagining the potions and magic remedies created by Biddy Early while painting an inventory of the plants growing in my garden. I mash up the painted flower and add it to the image of what was there. When assembled, I imagine this body of work as an art apothecary, with different combinations of the ingredients creating different viewing cures. Some of this work will be shown online in Kevin Kavanagh Gallery in November/December 2021.
It’s easy enough to describe how I got to this point, artistically, professionally and humanly, but going forward is more opaque. Actually, in thinking of this word ‘opaque,’ I often get stuck. In photoshop there is a tool called ‘opacity,’ which, when at its highest percentage, renders the image totally visible. In real life, it means obscure of sense, invisible. But I often get the two mixed up, and I think that this strange double meaning kind of fits when I use it to describe my future. I know I’ll still be making the work, I just don’t know where you will be.
Defiance (Roof Without Walls.) 2017. This work is in the collection of the Irish Arts Council.
My work has been supported by the Irish Arts Council, Askeaton Contemporary Arts, Fingal County Council and Culture Ireland. Most recently I was the recipient of a Platform 31 Award for County Laois. I am currently pursuing a PhD at KU Leuven entitled ‘Modes of Viewing: How to Act.’
What do I want from you? Why do I write this text? Is it because I want to share something, or because I was told to? In considering how ‘you’ will read it, (‘you’ hopefully being someone other than ‘me,’) I would like to share some things relating to the development of viewership and audience engagement.
This is by no means a definitive list, rather, a haberdashery of sorts, my own narrative stitched through the history shelves into relevant spines, to prop up against my own bar, serving tall pints poured with personal narratives. How academic!
Good Performance
The majority of good performance dictates to its audience how they must act. Rather than being something written down in a pamphlet to digest and practice pre-show, the way you should watch the performance has been defined through the performance itself.
Live, in the moment. The only way to learn the new terms of engagement is to attend, to witness, to participate (or not participate), and most of all, to act.
It’s like ballroom dancing with a good dance partner, the leader leads, the viewer follows. Dance with a bad dancer, however, and you might be inclined to rebel, to revolt or to leave the dancefloor. I think it was Chekhov who said, show the audience a gun in the first act, you had better use it in the third.
I draw your attention to Hugo Ball, dressed up in a cardboard cylinder to perform his abstract phonetic poem ‘O Gadji Beri Bimba.’ It caused chaos among audience members as they just did not know how to react, what to take seriously, how to engage.
Language, the motherload of culture, the determiner for how we think and communicate, whittled down into a collection of sounds chirruped and chanted by an obelisk shaped man. The ramifications were huge, to challenge the central pillar of communication, attacking it in such a way, also challenged the perspectives which we garner through language, behaviours, nationalism, politics, history, etc.
How do we perform (via language) in our everyday lives after that, knowing that it has been called out for being insincere? Ball wasn’t the first artist to use this medium, before him there was Marinetti, with his ‘Zang Tumb Tumb,’ and also Russian Futurist Aleksei Kruchenykh’s
Zaum language in ‘Victory Over the Sun.’
Language strikes again:
Hans Richter. Dada, Art and Anti-Art.
Marinetti and the Futurists
Marinetti and the Futurists welcomed heckling and shouts from their audience. The viewer was crucial to the performance, so much so that they would glue them to their chairs, patches of trousers and skirts screaming off as tempers tore.
They wanted to break the compliance of passive consumption, of blind acceptance, and so agitating the viewer towards a riot was a crucial factor in their performance. This focus on the role of the viewer as a fundamental component echoes throughout the twentieth Century, most notably with Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics. In stating that the only way to truly engage with an artwork was to be a part of it, this movement placed the viewer centre stage, the artwork’s legacy depending on their enthusiasm. Only then could the artist be sure that responsible viewing had been contracted.
Relational Aesthetics also sought to display the network of relationships necessary in creating a work of art, to blur the boundaries between negotiating the piece as creator, and negotiating the piece as viewer. But, as Claire Bishop pointed out, simply making us aware of these negotiations does not necessarily introduce a form of criticality in that it does not define what types of relationships we are looking at, if they are equal, or democratic. She criticized the vagueness of many R.A artworks, but held up Santiago Sierra as a successful Relational Aesthetics artist, for showing the subversive, and sometimes unequal transgressions that happen in many negotiations.
‘Ten People Paid to Masturbate,’ Santiago Sierra. Cuba. 2000
Roman Britain
‘The Romans in Britain’ when staged in 1980 at the National Theatre was sued by Mary Whitehouse, who accused the director Mr Bogdanov, of procuring an act of gross indecency between two males actors in the play.
The fact that no act really happened, (there was a simulation of a male rape scene) did not seem to matter, nor did the fact that Mrs. Whitehouse never actually saw the play. Her moral stance overrode these factors, and she felt obliged to tackle the theatre for staging a play which she considered unnecessary and indecent.
Fortunately, the court ruled in favour of the theatre. It was the first male rape scene to ever appear on a stage in the UK. Accounts from the opening night speak of nine hundred audience members, not shouting or walking out, but sitting frozen for the remainder of the play. ‘The atmosphere was later compared to the night in London theatres when it was announced before curtain-up that JFK had died.’
There have been recent attempts by morality campaigners to ban theatrical productions (e.g. ‘Behzti’ UK, 2004, ‘Jerry Springer, The Opera,’ 2005, and ‘Sur le concept du visage du fils de Dieu’ Paris, 2011), which brings back to the forefront the question of censorship, and deciding what narratives are appropriate for audiences today.
A group exhibition I was part of in Turkey 2016, ‘Post-Peace,’ was cancelled last minute by the institution, Akbank Sanat, deemed to be too culturally insensitive to stage. The offending artwork ‘Ayhan and me’ by Belit Sağ, is a video created from news archives which showed a Turkish police officer bragging about killing Kurdish people.
Belit Sağ. Ayhan and Me. 2016
In this age of fake news, and political correctness, it is more important than ever that we don’t treat audiences as children. Which begs the question; is engagement with morality absent from the modus operandi of our times?
Representing the Immoral
Art has a necessary role in presenting situations that challenge and provoke, it is through these provocations that a society sets its standards of behaviour. Rather than questioning the role of morality in art, (which doesn’t exist,) in order to be relevant, art must, to some extent, represent the immoral.
These provocations offer the possibility to stimulate reflection on and discussion around what is acceptable, and what is not, and why not. Without this avenue culture becomes something that we consume, the same way we consume McDonalds, or a Coca-cola.
Placing the artwork in a way that the viewer can have the maximum opportunity to be aware of their role is, for me, the ideal. Here I think of Guatemalan artist Aníbal Lopez (a.k.a. A-1 53167.) For the piece ‘El Préstamo (The Loan) (2000)’ situated in Guatemala City, the artist robbed a citizen on the street at gunpoint, and used the stolen money to pay for an exhibition at Contexto. This included invitations, installation, a lavish opening reception, all paid for by this victim, now unwillingly performing as patron. Upon arrival at the exhibition, the audience learned these events through a poster on the wall, the only visual piece on display. The attending viewer became complicit in this crime by participating as viewer, and as consumer. Which makes me wonder about complicity and the act of spectating: Are not all audiences complicit?
THE LOAN. On the 29th day of September, 2000, I did an action, which consisted of assaulting a person with the appearance of middle class. It was performed in the following way: armed with a gun I went out to a street in zone 10, stopped such a man of about 44 or 45 years, brown hair and a little overweight, I pointed in his face and told him, this is not an assault, it is a loan, and will bring visual language to your children. Such a person I call Q874.35. This work is being sponsored by the man that was assaulted, who has funded: invitations, assembly and part of the toast of this sample. A-1 53167 Guatemala 21/10/508 D. O.)
Perhaps this is why the most popular form of viewing has remained the same for over a hundred years, since The Moscow Art Theatre reformed the relationship between the viewer and the stage.
Stanislavski nailed the fourth wall up and many have been banging it down ever since. The ramifications of this wave have crashed through into other art forms, television, cinema, and sometimes, contemporary art, with many collectives fighting its wake to establish other ways of viewing. This invisible wall, invented by this collective, removed the necessity of communicating directly with the audience, establishing instead an experience where the viewer is required to watch this bubbled environment, creating an altogether more realistic performance and allowing for suspension of disbelief. The audience arrive and become silent observers, flies on the wall with no responsibility.
It remains, however, the most popular way of watching something today, this disengaged mode and you may ask, should it be so?
At this moment, culture cannot serve as a salve for nervous souls, even if the (then) President elect tweeted his disapproval of Broadway actors for using the theatre to communicate their doubts about his future administration.
Art’s particular license to speak up, to misbehave, mock and imitate reality, to blur genres and disciplines, this freedom, as long as it lasts, must be deployed to prevent the normalization of the emerging authoritarian paradigm.
To recap…
Violate language and communicate it. Curse your audience and kiss their throats. Question what you’re watching. Attack ‘appropriate’ narratives by telling the truth. Replace complacence with awareness. Leverage weakness to break power. Attack acts of gross indecency by staging acts of gross indecency. Take an axe to axioms. Swallow bubbles for breakfast. Divorce disengagement.
Ask in the taking, instead of begging for scraps under the table, howl at the edges of town.
The adventure, the great adventure is every day to see something new emerge in the same face, and this is greater than any journey around the world Alberto Giacometti
Finishing a piece is complicated. The decision is sometimes based on whether there are enough lines and shades on the page; everything is balanced. This generally means it is, compositionally, a good work or drawing.
If you are fighting with it and grappling with too much shade or darkness, it can get tricky. In my process, I often cut up or crop drawings to improve their composition or remove an element that is not working – it’s the last effort at salvaging a piece – and it doesn’t always work.
Some pieces stay in folders, unseen, invisible. Then there are drawings that can take less than ten minutes to complete – a quick adjustment in perspective or switch from pen to brush can alleviate any problems that were caused from the first attempt. In drawing, there is no right or wrong approach, and experimentation plays a crucial role in the process.
Seeing images from different perspectives is fascinating. It was Goethe that said every new object, well observed discloses a new organ within us.
So something new gets created or ‘disclosed’ when I photograph River House – a concrete office block near the Liffey in Dublin. When I collect the 35mm prints another new organ is disclosed.
Original 35mm print.
River House I.
Same goes for when I sketch from the photographs, perhaps more than once, and when I unwrap said picture from the framer.
Another new organ can be disclosed when I see the picture in different surroundings hanging perhaps on an unfamiliar wall.
River House has since been demolished to make way for a hotel, another new object I suppose. Both the photograph and the drawing become part of the architectural history of Dublin, in a way an archive of an ever-changing city.
It is often the architecture of cities that I am interested in, whether that be bridges, historical buildings, or their infrastructure.
The Process of Creation
Every new object, clearly seen, opens up a new organ of perception in us
Goethe
River House II.Site of River House since demolition.
This process of creation, image-making or mark making, changes how I see the original location. Having photographed and painted the interior of Dublin’s General Post Office or Busáras, one of Ireland’s most important modernist buildings, it is a treat to return to these spaces and see how they have changed.
The experience of image-making changes my perception of the spaces also – having observed the object (for example the GPO main hall) I have the ‘new organ of perception’ is present when I revisit.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) posited sense data as “third things”, standing between material objects and perceivers, and serving as the immediate objects of perception.
Sense data are the things that are immediately known in sensation: such things as colours, sounds, smells, and so on.
Russell used the object of the table as an example: ‘The real table, if there is one, is not the same as what we immediately experience by sight or touch or hearing, is not immediately known to us at all, but must be an inference from what is immediately known.’
Russell wanted a new connection between sense-data and objects; a new conception of objects as logical constructions built out of or referred from sense-data.
Objects themselves cannot be viewed as substances without sense-data, they alone are invisible. Everything we see is an image itself – a projection.
My work is this third thing – the immediate object of perception. It is an effort to understand objects and how the brain perceives them by slowing down the process of visual perception, picture by picture.
Turlough Rynne is an artist based in Ireland. For more information visit www.turloughrynne.com
Further Reading
Giacometti: Sculpture Painting Drawing, Thames and Hudson 1972 Goethe and the Evolution of Science Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy The Great Philosophers, Arcturus Publishing 2008
Marc di Saverio hails from Hamilton, Canada. His poems and translations have appeared internationally. In Issue 92 of Canadian Notes and Queries Magazine, di Saverio’s Sanatorium Songs (2013) was hailed as “the greatest poetry debut from the past 25 years.” In 2016 he received the City of Hamilton Arts Award for Best Emerging Writer. In 2017, his work was broadcasted on BBC Radio 3, his debut became a bestseller in both Canada and the United States, and he published his first book of translations: Ship of Gold: The Essential Poems of Emile Nelligan (Vehicule Press). On May 1st, 2020, Guernica Editions published Crito Di Volta. Di Saverio studied English and History at McMaster University, but never took a degree, due to illness. He is the son of Carlo Di Saverio, the scholar and teacher who studied Linguistics and Languages at University of Toronto (M.A.,1981). Di Saverio’s poem, “Weekend Pass”, was adapted into the movie, CANDY — directed by Cassandra Cronenberg, and starring the author himself — which was selected to the Toronto International Film Festival in 2013. In late 2020 he received Nobel Prize in Literature nominations, chiefly for CRITO DI VOLTA.
1. THE EIFFEL TOWER AMID KINGDOM COME (mixed media on board)
So, after a twenty year hiatus, I began painting and drawing again in 2018, due to a writer’s block that forced me into this earlier-studied realm of creativity. In this, one of my first of paintings, THE EIFFEL TOWER AMID KINGDOM COME, I envision Paris after the Second Coming of Christ, when peace, love and joy will reign supreme on earth, and there is no more war, famine, or strife. I portray a “Golden Age”, when Angels, saints, and believers in Christ will encompass the world during the thousand year period depicted in the Book of Revelation, in the New Testament of the Bible.
2. A CITY IN THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN (marker on board)
In the painting, I imagine what a city in Heaven might look like, suspended on the air, the air of the sky moving under the bridge as though water. Of course, above the bridge, and below the bridge, we see the same colours, suggesting the elevation of this city-portion of Heaven. The structure in the painting came from my imagination, completely. I began to paint by imagination after seeing some of William Blake’s inspired paintings.
3. A FUTURE FARMHOUSE AND ITS LAND (marker and gouache on board)
This painting was, too, generated and painted from my imagination, wherein I saw what a future farmhouse and its land might look like in a hundred years, when there is a resurgence of divisionism, but not in just painting, but in reality, as displayed in this picture. Like a work by Escher, some parts seem impossible and both visually wonderful and visually impossible to fully understand or appreciate because of certain geometric anomalies in the painting, which was executed in late 2019, during a snowstorm.
4. CHRIST ON THE CROSS (soft pastel on board)
Here is one of the first drawings I executed, in 2018, after twenty years hiatus from painting. After having composed two other crucifixion scenes, in which Jesus was clearly harrowed, I wanted to create a picture of the crucifixion where Jesus Christ seems to be at peace, rather than in throes, because I wanted to be able to have a permanent vision of a Jesus who might have accepted his fate, or at least in this moment captured in the picture. The relative serenity in his face, considering his situation, expresses my aim exactly.
5. THE PANTHEON AFTER A SNOWFALL (marker and oil on board)
This painting was created in late 2019, during winter, in Canada. I had always wanted to see the Pantheon after a snowfall, so, I imagined just that, and then executed it upon a stretch of board. I added the white snow to lend the feeling of safety, peace and holiness to the viewer. Notice that, in contrast to the bland snow, the Pantheon and surrounding buildings are electrified with pure, neon colour, giving an updated, hyper-modern feel to the composition, while at the same time retaining the elegance and universality of the Pantheon.
6. THE FOUNTAIN OF IDENTITA IN RACALMUTO, SICILY (mixed media on board)
The Fountain of Identita, which not longer exists — it was demolished in the late 20th century — once stood in the centre of Racalmuto, Sicily, wherefrom my mother and her side of the family came in the 1950’s. By way of imagination, and by way of imitating an old postcard of the Fountain, I created this painting, which I wanted to be so illuminated with pure colour that no one would ever forget the fountain, despite its nonexistence, today.
7. SELF-PORTRAIT WITH LONG HAIR (marker, oil and gouache on board)
In this, my first ever self-portrait — i painted it in 2019 — I attempted to transmit the image of my face from a photograph onto board. The photograph depicts me at the age of twenty-seven, when my hair, unlike today, was extremely “big”, thick, and long. Though I do not have the courage to grow my hair this long again, I figured I would at least capture it in painting. As you can see, I used to do my best to dress well in those days.
8. A VENETIAN CANAL WITH GONDOLAS (Oil on Board)
In this, my first pure oil painting in twenty years, I successfully, by way imitating a photograph i had taken in Venice, long ago, depicted two boats in a canal, at about sunset. The boats are not gonadliered, suggesting the day is at a close. I attempted to use an impasto style in the piece, in order to portray the denseness of the beauty in that immortal city.
9. LIAM GALLAGHER, 1995 (mixed media on paper mounted on board)
Here is a depiction of the Irish-blooded singer and superstar, Liam Gallagher, from the band Oasis (1991-2009) — a depiction of the rock star at his peak, in 1995, around the time when Wonderwall, their biggest hit, was released to the astonishment and happiness of Oasis fans. This is one of my few works that was BEGUN tweny years ago, but finished most recently, in 2020. My greatest challenge, here, was to truly achieve semblance of Gallagher, which I believe I have.
10. SELF-PORTRAIT WITH RED HAT AND WINTER JACKET (Oil and Pen on Board)
Here is my second ever self-portrait, which depicts me in the present, as opposed to when i was twenty-seven, like in the aforementioned self-portrait in gray. As you can see, the Jacket almost looks like Napoleonic era military fatigues, but this was unintentional. All I wanted was to paint something that would resemble me — and my current coat — and i think I succeeded!
11. QUARANTINE (Mixed Media On Paper Mounted On Board)
This painting is designed to capture the feeling of isolation induced by the quarantine in which most of us have living, since the beginning of the Covid Pandemic, which has had untold effects upon the minds of so many. This painting reflects the psychological, rather than the physical effects of Covid, since, too often, the effects of the pandemic on the minds of millions have been overlooked, or, to me, underreported.
12. ONE BLUE FLOWER (Watercolour on Paper)
Finally — and for old time’s sake — here is an example of one of my paintings from the old days — from tweny years ago — when I had recently discovered painting. In those days, I was in love with the delicacy of watercolour, and had not yet explored oil painting, or even drawing, for that matter. The sublime uncontrollability — the riskiness — of watercolour, enthralled me. In this particular painting of a blue flower, the viewer is hopefully taken aback by not only the precision, but the acquiescence of the colours of work therein. I consider this my first real painting. I hope that you find as much pleasure in viewing it as I had in creating it.
I have always been a creative person. When I was a child I loved to draw and cut paper, my kindergarten teacher was ever so impressed by my straight cutting lines!
My grandfather painted in oil and made sculptures out of wood he found in nature. He told me that there is no tree in the world that looks like another tree. That sentence has stuck with me over the years, and I can still see his drawings of trees in my head. That sprawling line in black carbon. The drawn line is very important to me, so is the craftsmanship. I really want to feel the person behind the drawing/illustration, and when it is all digital I can’t sense the person behind it any longer, and lose interest.
Career Options
When I was growing up I knew I wanted to work creatively in some way, but I was not sure how.
I started out with ballet, but after being rejected by the Swedish ballet school I began to dream about becoming an architect, living in a self-drawn house with two big dogs.
Then, when I was about twelve I realized that I was quite good at drawing. We had a class in school where we drew onions with soft pastel crayons and that was the first time I understood that I had a true talent for drawing. I captured the onion’s expression and the wink on the surface.
Grandfather
My grandfather, who was such an important person to me, always said that there was no future in being an artist. He himself was from a working class background and quit school at the age of twelve, with no further possibility to study. Since I had the option to study whatever I chose, he thought I should become a doctor, or some other serious occupation where you made a lot of money and earned respect.
So with that in mind I have tried to come up with more commercial ways of working creatively. Becoming an artist and being successful felt impossible and something that only rich people with great confident could aspire to.
When I turned nineteen and applied for art school I had a plan to become an interior designer.
I envisaged myself strolling around in fancy suits with a leather portfolio full of brilliant ideas. It was not so much the design work I was interested in but rather the lifestyle.
Being a successful business woman became a big goal, but it had to be in the creative industry. After a year of painting still life in oil and drawing croquis we had a class in illustration and from that point on that was all I wanted to do.
It was the perfect mix of artistic work, while remaining in the commercial world. To become an illustrator I had to apply to the most competitive college in Sweden, so I have attended a lot of art and design schools, seven years in total. It took me a while to develop my own way of drawing, and it did not evolve fully until my last term of Design College.
I graduated from Beckmans College of Design in 2007. Then I felt quite scared and alone in the world. I had my portfolio of pencil drawings and a well-respected qualification, but I had not done any illustration work, and settled for a part-time job at a grocery store to pay my way.
As that summer went by I felt more and more frustrated. I suppose I am a very emotional person with little patience. Then in the beginning of autumn something amazing happened. The best illustration agency in Sweden got in touch and said they wanted to represent me!
I could not believe my luck. From then on my career received a real push and I worked with all sorts of clients from all over the world. One of my first jobs was from a bank with offices all over the world. I got paid so much I really could not believe it!
Some people said that I had sold out, but I think they were just jealous. My first objective was to make a living as an illustrator, but after doing so for over a decade I’m more interested in the artistic expression of telling my own story, rather than clients’.
In my drawings I want to create magic and poetry. I want you to sense the vibrations from the pen. I want to take you to other places, other dimensions. Where words are unnecessary.
My favourite subject is girls and nature. Perhaps I’m just drawing myself in different versions over and over again. I don’t want to do what is expected of me. If I do so I feel I have failed.
I don’t want to draw the happy life, the smiling girls and the cosy gardens, which can make things tricky when working commercially. Indeed, clients always ask if my characters could smile a bit more… It’s as if there is no place for seriousness in the sales department. Perhaps that’s why I’m doing more and more personal art these days.
Like many others, I draw inspiration from many different things. I often find it in novels. At the moment my favourite author is Agneta Pleijel, I want to draw like she writes. I am also inspired by great artists like Jockum Nordström, Klara Kristalova and Lucian Freud.
Even though I have a hate/love relation with Instagram, I must admit that it is a big source of inspiration, even though it can be quite fast paced and homogeneous. You see so much in such a small amount of time. A true piece of art get swiped away in a matter of seconds.
It’s such a different experience to sitting at a bench in a museum, experiencing an artwork in real life, where it is in its natural environment with appropriate lighting.
I love going to museums. They are like churches for me, where I can find pieces and feel the love in the world. In Stockholm we have the Nationalmuseet, a place I love to visit, where there is art from all times across history.
Since I was a child I have loved naturalistic portrait painting, particularly the fabric that often folds and the way the dresses fall in old paintings.
I’m also very interested in the face, specially the eyes with their gaze and the wink in the eye. Overall I love to work with details, drawing the hair shaft, and trying to understand how a certain surface can be translated into a drawing – like a knitted sweater or a shiny plastic jacket.
I just love to take my time, and not work under pressure, allowing the line to go on the paper; filling up the spaces moment after moment. But of course when working with illustration you have a timeline to adapt to, which can make the drawing stressful and without soul. I try hard to avoid that. It gives me a feeling of being without a purpose, where everything is meaningless.
When I illustrate I draw everything in pieces. I draw the head on one piece of paper, the hair on another, the shoes on another etc. Then I scan the drawings and put it all together in the computer. I often say that I cheat a bit, because when you draw big and then make it smaller in the computer it looks more detailed than it really is.
When I started out I used the mouse to work with the illustrations on the computer, but now I use a Wacom board and that makes the process so much easier, and I guess I also work more on the computer than before because it is so easy to adjust the picture digitally. But lately I’ve got more into making drawings as originals, big ones. I have not managed to finish anything yet but I hope I will find the time soon.
I’m originally a lone wolf, but lately I have managed a few interesting collaborations. One is with the excellent artist Petra Börner. We had an exhibition together at The Museum of Drawings called ”Drawn to the Line” here in Sweden, and it was the most creative fun I have had in a long time.
Petra works in a completely different style that goes really well with mine. To see two artistic expression meet and create a new one was a true awakening for me.
We are now trying to find a new location for the exhibition and I’m also working on new drawings and sculptures in ceramic that can be part of the original exhibition.
I’ve also collaborated with jewellery artist Sanna Svedestedt Carboo. I draw her leather jewellery and invented a woman wearing them. We both love braids and pine trees so that was a natural theme for collaboration.
The exhibition Braid.Stone.Needle that includes my drawings and Sannas art jewelry is currently being showed at MUSA, a fashion store and Gallery in Gothenburg, Sweden.
I have also just started a artist collective together with artist Mia Nilsson called Fina Linjen. Some of Sweden’s most excellent illustrators is part of the group. I hope it will have a bright future.”
Growing up in a small rural town in Israel, Pardes Hanna, has shaped me into who I am today. My grandparents were part of the hundreds of thousand people who fled Europe prior to the Holocaust and settled the land of Israel in the 1930s. It was important to them that we were raised as Israelis. They instilled their love for the Jewish country into us and this is what has inspired me throughout my career as a photographer. My image making is a reflection of my childhood in Pardes Hanna; it is filled with my interpretations of the emotions and senses that I grew up with: from the breeze I felt while swinging on a tree swing to the sweet tangy flavor I tasted from our mango tree. These moments are what has influenced my work and continue to be a part of my photography every day.
From On Our Journey To Home
I did not always notice that my photography was shaped by my childhood memories. During the years, I realized that I had been always carrying memories of the house I grew up in with the big luscious trees surrounding it deep down within. I develop these feelings further and organize my work into a book. Forming my book, The Orchard Trail, which is based on my raw childhood emotions, feelings, and memories. It was only while working on the book that I realized that most of my photographs are based on the innocence from my childhood.
Pardes Hanna, translated directly into “Hannah’s Orchard”, is a town that was filled with orange, avocado, and mango orchards. I remember small moments such as exchanging our avocados for the neighbor’s mangos. My images reminded me of how it felt to lay on the grass under our big tree reading a book.
Looking up to the skies and inventing stories based on the shapes of the clouds.
Hearing the rustling leaves and picking oranges with my father in the nearby orchards.
On a rainy day, I would set a chair under an umbrella and listen to the sound of the raindrops.
As kids, we would walk over to our neighbor’s house for story time or a piano lesson.
These are the memories that inspire my photographs, they remind me where I started and who I really am.
Through the process of placing images together and choosing which ones would come together to form diptychs, I learned so much about how different aspects of my life are threaded together once they’re viewed on a deeper level.
The Orchard Trail became a homage to the magical place I grew up in. My grandmother planted a tree in the backyard of my childhood home when her and my grandfather arrived in Israel in 1933 from Germany, against her family’s will. The tree became a symbol of growth, its roots planted deep into the ground to prove to anyone who thought they didn’t belong that they were staying. I learned who I am through the creation of my book, The Orchard Trail where I explored the importance of the family that I raised and the way I engrained my values into my children and future generations. After finishing The Orchard Trail, I began working on a new project called, Keeping the Flame.
It was during this project that I researched more about my Jewish heritage and looked into the past to learn about the roots that have brought me to where I am today. I focused on who I am as a modern Orthodox Jewish woman, and also researched the Jewish artist, Chagall. I then moved on to learning about the Jewish homeland, Israel, a land that has held my past along with my future, through analyzing the art of Israeli painters. Lastly, I represented my relationship with the land of Israel through my photographs of ballerinas (images 12-16 ) who are always in motion but are also stable and balanced, just like I have moved away and back to Israel several times, I always know that it will be there as a place for me to call home.
Learning about who I am in the past, present, and future has given me depth and appreciation for where I came from, the journey I am on, and for the family that I’ve raised.
In Cuba, I was exposed to a small Jewish community, one of the smallest in the world. They serve as a proof that when a community sticks together, they can overcome anything. I realized then the importance of having a community as support, and this inspired me further to tell the story of the Jewish people. They showed me that even with limited resources, the importance that the Jewish traditions play in who they are and what they believe in. Furthermore, it showed me how vital it is for us, as a nation, to pass down our traditions even when it is difficult, because if not for us, they will not exist.
From On Our Journey To Home
In my book On Our Journey To Home, I visually describe the migration of my family from Europe to Israel in 1933. This immigration story tells of the many challenges and hardships involved with such an effort to establish life in a new land. At the same time, it expresses the sense of optimism and the determination that sustained the hopeful vision. The journey involves sacrificing closeness to friends and family, learning a new language and adapting to a different culture in order to fulfill a dream of a home and better life for generations to come.
From On Our Journey To Home
I poetically sketch the feelings and dreams of my grandparents beginning with the time of the diaspora, their fears and insecurities involved with life in Europe at the time. They dreamt of a place for a new beginning, where they could start over and shape it however they desired, a place where they would create a just and giving society. Therefore, they settled in a small town called Pardes Hanna’, where they farmed the land, and built the town from the ground up with their own hands.It was a new and optimistic beginning, but not always a smooth one, with a lot of difficulties and sadness, Life in the new land wasn’t easy. There was much fear; of the enemies around, of illness, and that their dream would not come true.
The story continues on for five generations, to include the experience of life for my family in Israel today, which is wonderful, far beyond anything my grandparents imagined more than a hundred years ago.
It was a journey back in time while I spent part of it searching the archives of Germany, Israel and the United States, reading letters that my grandmother wrote, or articles written about her in newspapers. I learned taught everything I could from the places where they lived, and the spirit of that period, and so this book was created, by virtue of imagination and thought.
The title image is from Michal Greenboim’s last project “On Our Journey To Home”
This drastic, clean-cut deprivation and our complete ignorance of what the future held in store, had taken us unawares; we were unable to react against the mute appeal of presences, still so clear and already so far, which haunted us daylong … The plague forced inactivity on them, limiting their movements to the same dull round inside the town, and throwing them, day after day, on the illusive solace of their memories. For in the aimless walk they kept on coming back to the same streets and usually, owing to the smallness of the town, these were streets in which happier days, they had walked with those who now were absent …
And the narrator is convinced that he can set down here, as holding good for all, the feeling he personally had and to which many of his friends confessed.
It was undoubtedly the feeling of exile – that sensation of a void within which never left us, the irrational longing to hark back to the past or else to speed up the march of time, and those keen shafts of memory that stung like fire.
Albert Camus, The Plague p.60, 1947
‘Mood 1: Suspension’ from ‘The Timelapse’. (c) Letizia Lopreiato
Of trauma and of the exile from self and the world we once knew …
My handcrafted trauma therapy
I only recently got back to this book, and how strongly these pages resonate with my tireless work to bring to life my “Timelapse” project experience during this time of self-isolation. It has left me speechless. A poet left with no words, almost ironic in fact … These words truly have been marked by an imposed distancing from all things social so beloved to me, which is starting to feel quite painful at times whilst all these photos and all those words and all these memories have no other place for now, other than the walls of my apartment …
This book was left to me by a good friend, one of Dublin’s main characters if you ask me. He was working at “Dublin’s best kept secret café” as the signs says, right behind one of my favourite bookshop. Paco knew, I remember the first day I went there, I just felt his humanity. And so since then I came back every day, my refuge in time of pain and sorrow whilst traveling back and forth, at one stage even every week, and for over a year, in between so many spaces, so many memories … Paco knew I was exhausted but he also knew I had a story tell, letting me write, taking photos for hours in the garden. Always the same seat, by the corner, where it was safe for me to hide. One day he came to me with a flower and a glass of bubbly with a strawberry, a big smile, which would have cheered the entire city up. He just knew though I never told him what was happening. He knew now I know, because we have all, for one reason or another, from the ones we love, the ones far from what we knew as an anchor to our self, we have all been there, in that no man’s land that trauma throws you on. Like a massive wave it carries you to a foreign land. It is a shore, you just can’t see the rest of the island … yet. For many years the sensation of exile following the death of my father truly followed me too, just like the narrator in The Plague, until I arrived home. Ireland, Dublin, its magical people, its incredible feeling of community, allowed me to be present, to slow down, to feel my own thoughts. Thoughts that I have had for so long but that I could not hold the energy to engage with, it was like I couldn’t handle the intensity of them for so long, until when It finally felt like I had no escape from the awareness of them, if I truly want to make through it and still be myself.
Paco left me this book the day before he left, after almost twenty years in Dublin, to return to his home town. A return I could never see for myself, as Ireland is already home, it truly always had been for me since I first came here as a kid to practice English. I just knew it was where I belonged, this magical land where healing is led by the creative force of its nature, if you only allow it to flow through you. And thankfully now my mum is here, she is back home too. Her healing began when she asked me for help two years ago, up to then she tried everything in her power not to “disrupt” my life she said. When the only thing I could have asked for, what I was waiting for, was for her to be ready to let me in, and be present. I have never seen myself as the type person living so close to their family, I always aimed to live abroad. I never felt at home in my country, never like I have always done here. But one thing is to choose not to, another thing is to feel you can’t reunite with what you feel as family, simply because trauma took it away, because the losses became unbearable, because the world you knew, the life you had, simply ceased, simply leaving you wondering around like a ghost amongst ghosts, haunted by the sensation of feeling betrayed by life somehow … Losing faith in the unexpected, in the positive, fearing any new beginning, perpetually condemned to relive that painful past, which is always so present, over and over again.
Love does not equal hurt, it might equal pain, so does life, because that is what life means, it makes us feel. The state of being frozen, collapsed in one’s own perception of constant risk, as if the entire world is aiming to hurt us sooner rather than later if we only allow it. It is that dimension whereby expressing feelings equals weakness, the “better be numb and selfish” mentality, rather than admitting we still feel too hurt. When we think nobody cares anymore, as everybody moved on, somehow, with their lives. Everybody but us … It is hard to dismantle false beliefs, put there to protect us in the first place, when by nature we are drawn to think firstly of all negative possible consequences to our actions. We are animals after all, and nature is something to be feared, the unexpected is a threat, and it can only be fought back, by staying constantly alert.
‘Mood 2: Anxiety’ from ‘The Timelapse’. (c) Letizia Lopreiato
Getting out of the hole in which we stick ourselves in whilst experiencing trauma, and where we ourselves decide to remain even after the event, is because of the self-complacency bubble, the of victimhood, which is way too easy to live in versus the admission of being always able to save ourselves, which does requires effort, accountability and above all which involves the need to learn (or to learn again), to be response-able.
It might be not what we really want to do what matters in this case, to me at least, it has been more a case of, “did I really feel like leaving that state”, and for this, timing is crucial and it is different for each and every person.
In this story, I needed to reach rock bottom, and so did my mum, to realise, to feel, that we weren’t betrayed, that trauma has always been there as the most precious healing opportunity, in its pain and apparent unfairness.
And so surely this is a long way of saying, the way to healing, it requires a choice, and this choice should be recognised as growth, and not as threat, it requires awareness, and awareness to grow, it needs a fearless space, which can only be built through gentleness, compassion, self-love and loads of self-respect, for our need for safety and security, to finally be met. Because fear means resistance, and within resistance, change is nor recognised as growth, but a self-inflicted pain, chaos, anxiety, which becomes the only comfort zone.
It is possible to rewrite our story, at any moment, anywhere you are. And each and everyone’s story is always different, but that is the thing, this is not a competition about who had the worst in life. And I won’t go into the details of what exactly happened to me because it is not what I believe the value of sharing this experience is. This is just one experience, one story, which has been sitting in my room making me almost unable to breath properly at night when looking at all those photos hanging on my wall. Every day, I have been reliving the feeling of all those memories, It wasn’t pleasant, but I knew it was “a storm I had to face” to find my land, to find peace. Writing this piece, I have started reflecting on why this was happening, and what this creative process has meant for me. Reflecting on where I stand now after all this, and why I was resisting looking at how this crisis, this storm, changed me and led me to feel love again, to open my heart again.
I was risking stagnation, the elephant was not even just in my apartment, it was sitting on my chest wherever I was going before I embraced this experience and let it flow through me … My shadow was there, asking me to look at it and become friends. And so I did, I befriended my demons, I accepted my shadow, and now I am at peace. And my mum is on her way to heal too, embracing the last phase of her life, leaving the sensation of shame, of guilt, of abandonment that trauma shuffles you with when not explored, when not embraced.
This process to me, the one of embracing my shadow, as my dear Jung would have defined it, it has been the highest lesson that self-love could have led me to.
And I did it through art. Art for me has not only meant survival, art has brought meaning to my life, without which in all likelihood, I would not be here to tell this story.
My mum is now starting her first ever art therapy course, as well as her English classes, encouraged by how therapeutic this project has been to her too. Her reactions passed from outburst of irritation, to laughter, to surprise when looking at herself in this project’s photos. Hanging on my walls for the past month and a half since lockdown started, there are the photos of the incredible journey within of two women, out of their roles of mother and daughter, two friends, coming back home, home to themselves, and to one another.
‘Mood 3: Grief’ from ‘The Timelapse’. (c) Letizia Lopreiato
A journey of self-healing, of self-empowerment.
If we would only choose to be present, to gift our time when we sense discomfort, within us and in others, if we would only train our hearts and our minds to hold that space, the space needed for everybody to share their stories of difficulty, of pain, of trauma, of guilt, of shame even … This world would be a better place, a place for empathy, a place for self-acceptance and for truth, rather than a comfortable fiction dimension with “positivity 24/7” as one solution fitting all purposes.
We have our own unique narratives. But it is important always to keep in mind that history is shaped by those who tell the story.
So why not being ourselves, to tell our story? To share our truth? To reshape our narrative?
“Nobody better than you could depict your feelings”, John Gunn, another Dublin’s icon if you ask me, once told me to encourage me to start taking photos of myself in order to portray my poems. This was instead of my original choice to find a photographer for this purpose.
In Trauma Therapy from a somatic approach, we study that in order to heal from trauma, what needs to be guided is a work reconnecting one’s images, feelings, meaning, expression, actions and relationships. This is because of the disconnection that trauma creates, and which fractures one and / or many of these links.
If you would ask me what photography helped my mum and I with, I would tell you:
Using photography along with poetry and reflective journaling, helped the reconnection through images, of the meaning of our feelings, to find a reason and closure for our actions, and even for the hurtful actions of others. It allowed us, to give ourselves a path towards forgiveness.
It has represented a free form of expression for our relationship with ourselves, with what happened and with one another.
Art in the form of what I call “my handcrafted art therapy during lockdown”, truly allowed for this reconnection to start happening.
This film photography and poetry project, titled “The Timelapse”, is the result of the last two-and-a-half years of documentary work, which felt more like an exploration, and a deep dive into the experience of trauma, bereavement and all its consequences for the mind, the body and surely the spirit.
The consequences created by the unexpected sudden void which opens under our feet when death knocks at the door. Death, as well as love, triggers within us the more primordial fears, but also the most shining of all glimmers: the one of hope, the one of happiness, the one of that on-going learning process that is the letting go of what has already happened, and which is no longer with us.
No matter how long we feel we should wait and hold on to the memory of it, how long we feel we should do so, to honour its prior existence … It is a call for the acceptance of the inevitable change that is the jump into the unknown after the experience of loss that has to be embraced to start healing. That beginning of a new cycle in life, where, luckily, everything has already changed, us included, no matter how long it takes for us to admit that.
We grew. We evolved. It was painful, it was harsh, but it did happen. No matter how long we chose to numb ourselves for, by trying not to look in that mirror. Trauma equals change.
Trauma is that breaking point, for the no-return to the ones we once were. In its toughest form and shape it is the deepest of all lessons, it is there for us to learn, once and for all, to avoid stagnation.
Resistance to the inevitable change that trauma imposes translates into stagnation for the spirit, for the mind, an intoxication for the body, that is desperately trying to follow up with a mind that can’t fit the memories of the experience anymore into any of the drawers which once were so orderly, storing the reality we knew before the event. It is a shock to our system.
This project and deciding to finalise and release it during lockdown anyways, with a digital launch instead of a physical one originally due at The Darkroom, here in Dublin, on April 30th, for Poetry Day Ireland, it was surely a journey of exploration for both myself and my mum.
A deep dive into the the ocean of those memories which truly didn’t fit with any of own or my mum’s drawers anymore. The cabinet of our hearts and of our minds needed to create a new filing system. I write poetry in outbursts, an uncontainable impulse, I feel it as a real need for me to maintain my mental health, rather than an aesthetic exercise. Only recently I started remembering what I write, and this I believe happened because the work of matching poetry with photography allowed me to finally reconnect my mind, my heart, and my spirit.
Before starting using film photography, I used to write, fill diaries with my poetry, and never open them again. Almost like my poems were truly some little creatures which I was growing until they came of age when they could be let out and about in the world and out of my mind.
‘From the Front’ from ‘The Timelapse’ (c) Letizia Lopreiato
I only now realise that I wasn’t taking proper care of them once I released them into the world though, I have realised this now through a deep self-love journey, that I was probably scared of them somehow, scared to see what parts of me I was releasing into the world, scared of what they truly meant to me. Of what they have been representing of me. Basically I realised that there is a lot of “fear of self” in the mere fact of not wanting to be fully accountable about my own art and in not having wanted it to become a final product until now, an independent creature.
I have realised I was afraid of losing control of my own fears, my deepest and most guarded secret instincts. A fear that my sensitivity will not be protected if it is released into the world. It was fear and guilt about creating my own Frankenstein, releasing it into the world and then abandoning it with no protection in front of it, to be accepted in its diversity.
A fear I released fully and substituted with love and respect for myself and for my own creations during lockdown and thanks to this experience, and to all who supported me and believed in me and my art.
I am thankful above all, greatly thankful to life for having granted me this healing space and time.
In fact, I didn’t quite understand why It felt so natural since the very first photo I took with my one and only film camera, for me to feel the actual action of turning what I see and sense into an actual tangible creature which finally was freed from my mind.
‘When Travel Means Need’ Part 1, from ‘The Timelapse’ (c) Letizia Lopreiato
The creative process is like alchemy to me. It feels like alchemy. The transmutation of what once was mainly painful and almost unbearable, into light, into meaning, into a being which has a life of its own, for anybody who would like to take it by the hand and go for a walk with it, in the midst of their minds, their hearts, their spirits. It will be a companion for their journey, wherever they would like to be, whenever they might feel like it. It is and will be, always available, just like breath.
Photography has allowed me to understand, to slow down, always to look with the eyes of the heart, at a manageable pace, the one of the human being, the one of a creation which is and has to be one with nature to feel whole.
Any distance, any avoidance of that space we need as animals by default, deep within us, to hold understanding of our actions, based on the feeling of it, it translates into a disconnection which we can’t afford. Playing the disconnected ones leads us to not being held accountable not even to ourselves, for our actions, for our words, because if we feel love, we feel pain, we feel loss, we feel it all. Soon it is there to realise that this which seems to be an easier option, always comes at a price, but that whoever loves and cares for us will be the ones paying it, paying the price of our disconnection.
And if one thing, death, loss, or any trauma in itself, does teach anything, it is that being selfish in this journey means more pain, it means more death, it means more losses, and it means stagnation. It is the emotional resistance to the experience of a change that in our body, in our cells, in the chemistry of our being, has already happened that feeds the disconnection.
It is the way I liked to see it, and unfortunately I have learned the hard way, it is paramount to need to release the water, our emotions, to follow its flow. Because only water can carve mountains.
‘When Travel Means Need’ Part 2 from ‘The Timelapse’ (c) Letizia Lopreiato
PTSD, depression, anxiety, loss, death, the experience of bereavement itself, both experienced first-hand, as well as lived through the experience of my loved ones, only represented for me the desperate call of my heart to find home, to go back to its true identity, which I had to bottle up to feel safer. Just like we all do. Photography along with poetry and creative writing journaling filled the walls of my apartment now turned into an art studio with photos hanging on almost every wall, and filled the walls I had built within as well. The difference is that now, I can see it, I can see those walls, and they are not within me anymore.
At the highest stage of the disassociation that trauma had left me with over the past decade, I was almost feeling like I was creating different movies. In every city, evert country, every job I chose to engage with … Experiences that now feel like belonging to different lives, many different movies, that you almost can feel like you wanted to switch from or watch again, to jump in and out of the memory of them without being overly impacted by it as you were living with them in a detached way, to protect yourself, but that is not life. That is surviving. Survival mode made a life style.
It really is not fiction though, and eventually the realization that all those movies would be looking better as one, and that you truly need to find and hold the space within yourself to sit, and watch it all. You need to feel it all, as your own. Because it represents you, and there can be no shame, no guilt, no fear anymore, because you have always had a choice, to leave behind the victim’s cloak. And you do this with compassion, kindness, self-love and self-respect, whenever you have felt ready for it. Whenever you truly felt at home again, whenever you can trust that out it is safe out there again for your needs to be met, for your voice to be heard, for your feelings to be truly “seen” and welcomed.
To experience the fear, to feel the pain, and to find freedom, once again. To be at one with yourself, and with all that is around you. Because independence does not equal loneliness and others can and want to be there and meet our needs, with patience, with time, with real love, with genuine care, if we choose to let them in. All levels of trauma, from childhood to adulthood leave us with the feeling of not being able to choose a way out. Being gentle with ourselves and one another, doing all in our power to show empathy, to feel tolerance, to experience connection as many times per day as we can. Write down the sensations, carry a diary, note it down on your phone, just remember, remember what it feels like to be present, once again. Out of your mind, into your body. There is always time to breath.
With light and respect,
Letizia Lopreiato June 2nd, 2020
‘Mood 4: Suspension’ from ‘The Timelapse’. (c) Letizia Lopreiato
These below are some references for the curious minds, to my learnings in regards to the perspective I gained whilst researching on trauma therapy, from a somatic psychotherapy approach:
The Polyvagal Theory, Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, Self-Regulation (2011), Stephen W. Porges, published by W. W. Norton Company, NY, United States
The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe (2014), Stephen W. Porges, published by W. W. Norton Company, NY, United States
Clinical Applications of the Polyvagal Theory: The Emergence of Polyvagal-Informed Therapies (2018), Stephen W. Porges and Deb Dana, published by W. W. Norton Company, NY, United States
The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy, Deb Dana, published by W. W. Norton Company, NY, United States
