Generally an
incredibly emotion orientated mind – emotionally engaged in my approach to all
aspects of life and emotionally literate in regards to other people (although
not always presenting empathy!)
Suddenly a huge and
unbalancing new inability to feel emotion for a day or two and desperate to
feel things again, sandwiched between intensely over-emotional hours and days.
Overthinking when
trying to rationalise emotions.
Racing thoughts.
Desperate now to turn
off all thinking and own emotions and just experience somebody else’s mind in
an immediate and obvious and simple way.
This was me last week,
and it was very disconcerting.
The reason I just
divulged my mental state will hopefully become clear soon.
I arrived at the Tate
Modern last Friday evening upset and totally overwhelmed and subsequently (and
also due to job issues) having an identity crisis. This was different to my
usual anxiety issues. New stuff was going on in my head.
I waited outside the
exhibitions for a bit unable to consider the possibility of putting my mind to
rest and calming down. I felt like there were a million little birds attacking
my head from the inside. Then I just decided to go for it and went into the
Mona Hatoum exhibition.
Greeting me was a
large slate grey textural cube. Immediately and absolutely I felt calmed and
curious. For once I wasn’t trying to intellectualise the artwork or analyse it
politically. The formal presence of the sculpture (Socle du Monde) miraculously disengaged my cerebral consciousness
and exhilarated my physical body. I could feel my skin reacting to the way the
sculpture looked and loomed in the white room. Instant relief at being able to
experience something of reality without using the interpretive powers of my
psyche.
It felt miraculous as
I say, but I then went to read the quote that was printed on the wall across
from the sculpture. I didn’t write it down but it was short quote from the
artist stating that her sculptures are intended to engage the audience with
their form, and from that then perhaps incite an emotional connection and
perception of it. So she had planned exactly what I had felt!
Through a
phenomenological effect Mona Hatoum had provoked mental engagement, and in my
case also disengagement from my own mind and into pushed it/me a wider context
of experience. Specifically I mean that the physical and textural existence of
the sculpture, which the cube shape covered in thick swirling patterns of iron
filings, had provoked a reaction in my mind and body.
I am a huge believer
in art as therapy (I am currently studying an art therapy course) but I have
always considered it to be so on a probing and emotional level, while somebody
makes art themselves as an exploration and expression of their own sense of
self. I had never considered, or rather I had never believed, that the
experiencing of another person’s artwork could be so therapeutic and on such a
visceral level.
I want to explain my
reactions to Mona Hatoum’s work, without particular intellectual scrutiny and deliberately
without reference to her own intended message and subject matter of the
artworks.
Light Sentence is a sculptural
installation using light to animate the connotations of a rectangular
collection of wire cages. A single bulb hangs low to the floor within a space
in the middle of the cages, and moves slight, throwing a shifting, dancing
light across the walls, floor and ceiling and also onto the viewers. The sense of becoming aware of your own
body when in this installation has a simple grounding effect on your existence
as just a person in a world of other people, and somehow this has an ability to
quieten whatever preoccupations and worries someone may be having. I was very
quickly learning how useful it is to be connected to the sensations your own
skin and your own occupation of the space picks up and interprets;
temperatures, textures, sizes, light and dark etc. All of these are grounding
for the mind when connected with. I suppose I already knew this passively, from
experiences such as enjoying getting soaked in the rain, or swimming
underwater, or covered in freezing mud in sports at school. I hadn’t however
considered it to be beneficial to emotional calming.
 |
| Light Sentence - Mona Hatoum |
In one room towards the end of the exhibition was a metal sculpture
titled Quarters, comprising several
five-tiered bare bunk bed frames. Again this was a very calming vision on first
impact; bare bed frames without evidence of specific inhabitation offered a
universal symbol of some sort. There was no personality and that was a fresh
feeling, not a cold one. The multiplicity of the bed image felt to me to be
representative of the diverse dynamics within both inter-human relationships
and within a single human’s relationship with themself. The bed is commonly a
site or a symbol of personal desire or feeling (negative or positive) and to
see this repeated without decoration seemed to imply the commonness of
confusion, complexity and multi-layered character of human self-image and
relationships.
The beds were arranged in a cross shape around a central point. This
spatial presence displayed, to me, the outward acting yet deeply internalised structure
of a personal attack mode we might take when it comes to the way we see
ourselves and our relationships. By this I mean that we are often defensive for
self-preservation purposes but simultaneously trying so hard to be open,
accommodating and present with ourselves and with those closest to us. The
occupation of the room by that bed structure felt at once defensive and open.
The non-linear arrangement seemed to exemplify the non-linear state of human
relationships and personal progression; our relationships go back and forth
between good and not so good. This is very much like learning to live with a
mental or emotional health problem; we view our malady as something that will
either get better and remain so, or get worse and remain so. At least this is
what we hope. But this linear progression through mental health struggles is
entirely unrealistic and for many there will be troughs and peaks throughout
our lives, but once we accept this and put in place a structure, or mechanisms
to cope with this, then we will hopefully become more resilient.
Going back to
inter-human relationships, the idea that there were multiple beds to choose
from, and specifically single beds, suggested that there were many places in
which to choose to sleep on any given night. This seemed to qualify the need
for both closeness in romantic relationships and also in friendships, but also
the craving for independence. It seemed to say that that polarity is at times actually
ok. Two people might even choose to sleep in different beds at different levels
rather than next to one another in neighbouring bunks, illustrating that
although two people are involved in a relationship or friendship, they may be
at different points at different times, requiring different things from the
relationship and from themselves. Throughout this non-linear entity though,
there is always an underlying feeling of support needed, something that the bed
sculpture provided both physically and with the emotional space it occupied.
Another
installation seen in the next room, Impenetrable,
enforced this resolution I had come to concerning human relationships and
personal pathways. The piece offered innumerable avenues for the eye to travel
down as I moved around the sculpture of hanging wire lines. This spoke
specifically I think to personal decision-making and progression.
So
having felt at loss with a lot of current artwork, especially that which I have
seen in London over the past three years or so, which I interpret as being very
self-indulgent for the artist and the self-referential art world itself, I was
pleasantly re-invigorated. My
personal approach to art making is political and activist so I naturally lean
towards other artists with a clear message that resonates in the context of
everyday scenarios. My areas of activism interest include environmentalism,
human rights – specifically indigenous rights as linked to environmentalism as
a legacy of Colonialism, and mental health awareness. I had not ever until last
Friday considered that a huge contemporary artist could be activist alongside
being fit for consumption by the art-world itself. Thank you Mona Hatoum for
helping me out there and for affirming that art can be useful on any level in
any setting. I realise that I experienced her artwork at a time when I really
needed it, but who’s to say that isn’t happening daily, across the world, for
many people who need a little respite.
