To Know Yourself Through Art

For me, knowing oneself is like an archaeological excavation. The cultures uncovered in archaeological excavations are investigated by utilizing many branches of science such as sociology, geography, history, ethnology. In order to get to know oneself, one begins to understand and recognize oneself by examining one’s own culture, the history of one’s ancestors, the culture and geography of the country in which one lives and, depending on all these, one’s perceptions and emotions.

When I started taking art therapy classes and started making clay sculptures as my main interest, I saw how the words ‘being a woman like a man’, ‘being strong like a man’ or ‘I have girls like a man’ that I raised inside me affected me, how I recognized myself in my own field of vision and how I revealed masculine bodies in most of the figures I made, even though I actually saw my reflection in the mirror.

While I was trying to make a female figure in the @ateliersandrinefollere workshop I went to in Toulouse, as I started to hold and shape the changes in the structure of the upper body and lower body, the muscles, the elegance of the body, the curves of the hips, the yoga movements I made with myself suddenly started to turn into an elegant dance. Even movements that should be done with strength, I stop trying to do them with brute force.

How much and how do we look at our body? How would we treat it if we perceived it as someone else? If we could hold it with our hands, notice its texture when we touch it, try to smell its scent…

How much and how do we look at our body? How would we treat it if we perceived it as someone else? If we could hold it in our hands, notice its texture when we touch it, try to smell its scent…

Uncovering the stories inside our bodies, one by one, makes me look at myself in a different way and changes my perspectives. The way I look at someone else is to understand the history they have accumulated in their inner world, rather than focusing only on their appearance or what they can do. 

This bust without head and arms will next time be a bust of a woman seeing herself in the mirror. With her head, arms and feet on the ground. It is like being born from myself again with the renewal of my perspective on myself.

So how do you see yourself? How do the words you are influenced by affect your body? Take a look at your own body and see what it tells you.

Namaste!