Participating in an online artist residency

This year has been quite an adventure for all of us, we are living through a worldwide pandemic and we are finding novel ways to stay connected.  One of those ways is finding a path to connect with other artists and creatives which is why I applied and got accepted to the Residencia Internacional Online (RIO; Online International Residency) by MANGO in collaboration with L’ Expressoir Résidence D’ Artistes.

The RIO spans through 6 weeks virtual meetings with artist to emulate the interaction and growth that happens in a face-to-face artist residency. We all started with a question we wanted to answer.  My question was tepid, but the more I spoke to the other artists the more I realized that my interest lies in discovering the power that anxiety has. I revisited my master’s dissertation:  

 I became interested in the phenomenon of anxiety and how an anxious body shows up in my personal experience (the embodiment of anxiety).

Although I had written my master’s proposal over 3 years ago, I found that the sentence still resonates with me today, going through a pandemic. What I have noticed is that those of us that experience anxiety have been very aware of its looming presence while others are just beginning to discover and name it.

I started making art with this in mind, working with layers and colors that spoke to me. I went through the process of choosing the colors and adding repetitive marks to create the background, which usually calmed me, followed by a sense of a pit in my stomach. Was this anxiety? Excitement? Perhaps a mixture of both.

Once I decided my backgrounds were finished, I did some research and chose body parts that are usually affected by anxiety, but also parts that I personally feel affected by it. 

I chose the heart, which feels like it races out of my chest; the brain, which fogs with looping thoughts that seem to have no end; the jaw, which I clench unknowingly and while I sleep; and finally the lungs, which seem to never get enough air, or too much air but never the right amount.

Although my experience of mental health is very personal, anxiety is also a universal human trait. With this in mind, I continue to work on my series of this residency and the final exhibition.