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Untitled, 2020

“This is all you have, this is where you are conscious, this is the only place you get to live, so live this life, now” I have caught myself more than once trying to explain to people around me to stop waiting for something better to come in life. I always tell them, and myself, that this is the life you have, this is where you are conscious now. If there is an afterlife, we’re not conscious there, so why wait to be happy there, why wait to be born again, why wait if this is all you have? This is your life, you run your life, you have control over it, you choose what to do.

And then just like that, at some point in everyone’s life that fantasy of control gets ripped away. This year control was taken away from everybody; curfews, restrictions and punishments were set in place to control the country’s every move. The lack of a sense of control awakens anxiety in the individual. It is a terrible feeling to have no control over one’s life and it influences one’s mental health. The feeling of no control traveled from a personal to a global level this year and every individual is affected by it.

This body of work explores the terrible feeling of the unknown, the feeling of losing control over your life, the feeling of being lost.

On a personal level, I lost a sense of control over my body and mind in many ways this past year.  Starting with outside people effecting my sense of control. Government restrictions, day to day patterns and schedules that keep your mental health in check to physical violations, to my body getting injured and is unable to work for weeks. Losing a sense of control because of these elements cause one to lose a sense of control over the self. This became clear when I had to deal with unwanted mental health diagnosis. This artwork communicated the feelings I went through when I was diagnosed. Feelings where I felt like I lost my identity, my sense of self, control over my life. The idea of having the take medication just to function in society. This messed with my head because how can I say that I am living my life and is control of my life, if everything can fall apart if I miss one day of medication. I am not in control, medication is in control, I am not in control the government restrictions are in control. I am not in control, my mental illness is in control, I am not in control, Covid-19 and the fear around it is in control. I am not in control and that makes me anxious.

 

This body of work explores the terrible feeling of the unknown, the feeling of losing control over your life, the feeling of being lost. On a personal level, I lost a sense of control over my body and mind in many ways this past year.  Starting with outside people effecting my sense of control. Government restrictions, day to day patterns and schedules that keep your mental health in check to sextual violation, to my body getting injured and is unable to work for weeks. Losing a sense of control because of these elements cause one to lose a sense of control over the self. This became clear when I had to deal with unwanted mental health diagnosis. This artwork communicated the feelings I went through when I was diagnosed. Feelings where I felt like I lost my identity, my sense of self, control over my life. The idea of having the take medication just to function in society. This messed with my head because how can I say that I am living my life and is control of my life, if everything can fall apart if I miss one day of medication. I am not in control, medication is in control, I am not in control the government restrictions are in control. I am not in control, my mental illness is in control, I am not in control, Covid-19 and the fear around it is in control. I am not in control and that makes me anxious.

Perpetuating, 2020

verb

gerund or present participle: perpetuating

  1. make (something) continue indefinitely.

 

We live in a world where it is rather difficult to separate the private and the public. As tough as it is already, we found ourselves in a global pandemic which moved our boundaries. The idea of public and private is slightly altered as the majority of people are confined to their homes. Your concept of private suddenly becomes even smaller just as your movement is restricted. During this time, people are worried about their mental health, they worry about their family and people closest to them. This artwork explores personal and public space. In order to look after my mental health, I had to shift my boundaries so that my own space does not involve anyone that affects my mental health. My public space became the people closest to me. In a time where people need to support others and need support themselves, I was forced to place support outside my personal space and find comfort within myself. It felt good.

 

Making a decision that deeply hurt and disappoint people close to you is never easy. One would think that making a decision to look after yourself, to love yourself and care for yourself should be an easy and right decision as it is ultimately your life. People are often told that you cannot blame other people for your pain, but I find myself in a dilemma. If I choose myself, I cause other pain, and if I choose other people, I create myself pain (and often blame them.) So, I decided to be a shitty person, I chose myself. I chose myself, and by doing that I hurt the people closest to me, but for the first time in a long time, I felt free and empowered. Dr Winch explains that true empowerment is not only feeling empowered. He explains that to be genuinely empowered it would have an impact on close relationships (Winch, 2013). To empower me, close ties were altered.

 

There are no set guidelines to follow to protect yourself. What I have learned over the years is that balance is key. Like many other people that grew up with toxic, destructive relationships in their personal space, it proceeds to have an influence on other relationships in their life.  I worked on myself to separate my personal relationships to public ones so that I do not have to protect myself all the time but learn to open up and to trust. Then I had to make the difficult decision to move away from the people closest to me. As humans, it is in our DNA to seek partners, companionship. We are not designed to be alone. This is something many people struggled with when they grew up in destructive environments. The easiest way to protect yourself is to be alone. This artwork does not promote being alone to be okay, but rather to do what is healthy for you, in your situation to be okay. I am lucky to have grown, and I allowed myself to break down my walls for some people.

 

During the lockdown, when I was wrestling with a balance of looking after my mental health, losing people and feeling selfish, but yet empowered. My world broke down. Fighting with boundaries and personal space, the person closest to me, whom I have taken my walls down for, betrayed by trust and violated me. When a person experiences trauma, the first response the brain gives is the fight or flight response. Murray explains that when a woman is violated by someone they are in a relationship with, it is overlooked that their emotional trauma is similar or even more as to when a stranger violate their body  (Murray, 2012). Being violated by people you trust, emotionally or physically messes you up—big time. I moved my boundaries to protect myself from close, destructive relationships and then I had to push my limits to protect myself from violence.

 

The goal of this artwork is to focus on not going back to hiding. To focus on myself to become what I want to be in this life without letting other people’s actions force me to hide and protect myself. This artwork explains that sometimes we should focus on ourselves and protect ourselves at all costs to live life fully. Breaking down high protection walls and not building them up again after trauma. In this artwork, I performed a ritual that confronts a trauma, face it and learn to use it to live the life you want to live.

 

 

This artwork is installed in the bathroom in my flat. The bathroom is a very private space. A place where one is completely vulnerable. This private space holds the pain and trauma but is also the source of energy to enter the world again. Tacey Emin’s artwork “Sad Shower in New York” relates to my chosen location. The shower is a space where I experienced one of my lowest lows, a place where I allowed myself to break. I move the artwork from this location to a public space, Clovelly Beach in Cape Town. By moving this artwork, I take the private pain and heal in public in order to refrain from building walls like the bathroom that keep me from living in public. I do what is necessary for me to heal so that I can live life to the fullest. Goggins explains that the majority of people live their lives at 40% and only with dedication and facing unsettling experiences, we can strive to live closer to 100% (Goggins, 2019). The sources of the reasons why I had to decide to choose myself, spread across the country. I tried to escape by moving away, but it always seems to find me, so I had to make the decision to start living my life.

 

I sculpted a wedding dress out of gauze and bandages. I have created a previous artwork with gauze that relates to identity. I chose to make the dress out of gauze for a number of reasons. Gauze is used to clean wounds and help with healing. Gauze consists out of several single threads that, alone, are fragile. But once these threads are threaded, it creates a strong material that cannot be torn by hand. I used the white medical gaze and manipulated it to sculpt a wedding dress. The process of working with gauze to create this dress is time-consuming and requires intense focus. You must be very careful because once you open the gauze, one wrong move and the gauze is ruined. This same level of attention and soft touch is what we need to use when we work to heal ourselves. I used simple blocks of gauze and manipulated it to create a beautiful dress that has texture, movement and dimension. The purpose of the gauze dress is to heal the soul. I see it as if I wrapped myself up into something beautiful to practice a ritual of healing with great significance in this stage of my life.

 

A wedding dress is associated with a specific day where you make vows to someone you love. I created this dress for myself and performed the ritual where I make vows to myself. It is the start of a journey where I have to hold myself accountable. I wore the dress, specifically designed for my body and walked into the public. I walked into the rough cold ocean and allowed the cold water to awake all the nerves in my body. By doing this, I was truly aware of my body, my soul and my mind. I baptized myself in the ocean to mark the significant event where I made vows to choose myself. The water was strong and ripped the dress just as life will continue to have challenges. This ritual marks the time where I made vows to myself, and it will remain in my life indefinitely.

 

This artwork focuses on the idea that we are only conscious right now. This is the time when we should live. We are in the now, and we have to make difficult decisions to be able to live the best life we can. I chose myself; I chose to live my life. I chose to be selfish in some situations, I chose to self-preserve in order to be okay. It is not an easy task, it is not pleasant, but it is empowering.

 

References

Goggins, D., 2019. Can't Hurt me. s.l.:Lioncrest Publishing, 2020.

Murray, Y. M., 2012. Rape Trauma, the State, and the Art of Tracey Emin. California Law Review , 100(6), pp. 1631-1710.

Winch, G., 2013. Emotional First Aid: Healing Rejection, Guilt, Failure, and Other Everyday Hurts. New York: Penguin Group.

Secularism: Who am I?, 2020

This artwork is a comment on the reality of secularism in many countries. This artwork addresses the lack of religious freedom in certain secular countries. The glitched video explores the harsh reality of religious minorities, the violence and brutality are brought to light in the video. The glitched soundtrack comment on the video by laying the definition of secularism as a system of peace and religious freedom over the brutal reality the video displays.

 

The sound consists out of many different audio tracks that I manipulated. Majority of the tracks are slow peace prayers and peace chants that I manipulated to be fast and modern. I manipulated every single audio clip and used many sources as inspiration. The soundtrack is easy to listen to as it comments on my personal experience of being shielded by the reality of the brutal religious fights for freedom. The tone of the soundtrack comments on my position and it is almost as if it asks, “who am I?”

Provisional Memory, 2020

MemoryKlare van Heerden
00:00 / 03:05

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Revisiting a place of trauma can be confusing and unsettling. Traumatic events often repress memories which means that the traumatic event and the memories and often memories that shape around the time of the traumatic event are stored in the unconscious mind and is blocked from the normal consciousness. Even when a person is unable to recall a memory, it still affects the individual through subconscious influences such as their behaviour and their emotional response to daily happenings. Memory is unreliable and often made up to cover up gaps of lost memory. Our bodies repress memories to protect ourselves. After a trauma, an individual can experience a range of different triggers that often cause the individual the relive the trauma in some sort of way. The body can have a physical, psychological or emotional response to warn them.

This artwork consists of sound recordings and imaged that I documented from my travels to and from a place that holds bad memories and trauma. Even though I am unable to access the memories of the specific traumas, I relive the emotions that experienced during the time of trauma. The sound clips are carefully curated to express the emotional journey of my trip to, and from a place of trauma. This artwork explores emotional memory which is a form of memory that can be triggered without context. In this instance, returning to the context did not bring back repressed memories, only emotions. I explore the liminal space between triggers and emotional reactions. This artwork also explores the paradoxical nature of memory and trauma and look at memories that seem good but holds years of pain and trauma. The documentation of this trip is curated in a way to take the viewer along on the journey. This artwork communicates with the viewer’s repressed emotions and creates an environment where the viewer can embark on their own journey of memory.

 

I used, and edited sound clips from OpenYale Courses: Psychology:

Bloom, P., 2009. Conscious of The Present; Conscious of The Past: Vision And Memory. OpenYale Courses: Psychology.

Bloom, P., 2009. Evolution, Emotion, and Reason: Emotions, Part 1. OpenYale Courses: Psychology.

Bloom, P., 2009. What Happens When Things Go Wrong: Mental Illness, Part 2. OpenYale Courses: Psychology.

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