SELF/REFLECTION has been selected as Featured Image for the contemporary art exhibition STILLNESS at Contemporary Art Spaces Mandurah. Lucy’s artwork is a lightbox that has been created using layers of transparency film, ink, and etched in sgraffito technique, illuminated to represent the blue-light typical of a handheld device.

Stillness: Artist Talk: Self / Reflection

Stillness is the means and the end to the act of journaling and self-reflection. It has played a big role in my mental health and wellness. I am increasingly concerned about the amount of distraction that we have to deal with in our everyday lives, especially when it comes integrating our lives with technology. These factors have inspired me to pursue a response to Stillness with my artwork entitled “Self / Reflection”.

Research has shown that journaling has a number of positive benefits, including:

·        Processing our thoughts and events from everyday lives

·        Providing a platform for self-expression

·        Offering a safe and non-judgmental space to explore our thoughts and feelings

·        Allowing us to review our journaling and reflect on our emotions

·        Helping us to understand ourselves better and make changes in our lives

A journal is a helpful tool for us to write and process what we experience, reflect upon our thoughts and emotions, and alleviate our mental stress. Humans have the unique ability to process, review, meditate and reflect on our thoughts; and then change our thoughts and behaviours based on our assessment of our future selves and our desired lives. In order to journal and reflect, we need to retreat and find a quiet space. Yet, the space where we remove ourselves from the world to begin processing our thoughts, has become a warzone. I don’t know about you, but it feels like we have been ambushed by social media. When it comes to private space and curating a quiet moment so that one can journey toward stillness – the struggle with distraction is real. The need for connection is integral to the human condition, and social media has become a necessary platform for finding meaningful connections. But when it comes to the “attention economy”, social media is very powerful and we have bought in to its processes, instead of dictating our own.

The subject matter I have chosen for my artwork is a well-known image by the Renaissance artist Caravaggio called Narcissus. In the Greek myth, Narcissus was a handsome young man who, after rejecting the confession of love from a young woman Eros was consequently put under a curse to only love himself. And so, the story goes that Narcissus, being a hunter, was returning from a day out in the field. He was thirsty, found a pool of water to drink from and after drinking a while, noticed his reflection and fell in love with what he saw. Narcissus could not pull himself away from his own reflection and the more he gazed upon his reflection and fell in love with what he saw, the more he realised that the reflection could not reciprocate; could not give him what he needed: love and acceptance. Not only was he limited to love only himself, but he could not receive love from anyone else. Narcissus died hopeless and starving next to the pool. The story highlights the danger and tragedy of extreme self-love or narcissism, which places self at the centre of all and denies our ability to give and receive love. Themes of Identity and Love are at its core.

In my artwork, I constructed the lightbox and used sgraffito, or scratching, as a drawing method, to etch into a thin film of ink. I have portrayed Narcissus staring into a pool that is radiating blue light. This is a direct reference to the blue light that shines on our faces when we look at our devices. My lightbox is the same shape as any familiar electronic device: portrait format with rounded edges. I want to show that we have fallen in love with our screens, they have captured our attention; we have been ambushed by social media. We are distracted beyond belief and unable to practice longstanding processes like self-reflection and self-review. In our modern world, we are constantly bombarded with images of ourselves and others, which we then re-post, and “re-story” online. A desperate need to update our constantly disappearing stories, to show everyone what we are doing, who we are with, what we think. This can lead to a distorted sense of identity and a disproportionate emphasis on self. In some ways, sharing to online “Stories” has become a way of live journalling. But it is a shallow, short-circuited version. Our acts of self-reflection are no longer meditative, but rather only reflective, like a mirror. They are no longer private, but public. How ironic. What an oddity. And what a tragedy. Narcissus starved to death, so extreme was his self-love that he neglected self-care and could not love outwardly, only inwardly. He was stuck in the endless loop. Similar to the endless scroll. We can learn to do things better than Narcissus. Self-reflection and social media have their place. Will we be brave enough to place them where they belong?

We are humans, not robots. We are made for relationship, connection, contemplation, spiritual connection, and self-reflection.