Michaela has been our resident writer since we started on this art zine adventure, and she had created some great pieces, many of which are in the writer’s section of the zine. We decided to give her a dedicated page for her writing here.
BA (Hon) is a Fine Art graduate of Newcastle University based in Gateshead. Michaela is a writer interested in the context of contemporary art and the creative industries in everyday life and socio-politics of the twenty-first century. Michaela is also an artist whose work spans painting, collage installation and drawing with a love for colour, vibrancy, and texture.
Invisible boundaries
It’s no secret that mental health is something that has carried a stigma for decades, and even now, while we’re encouraged as a nation to talk more, share more and be open – there’s still some stigma and taboo around completely opening up about our mental health. While some find this easy, others find it impossible to share the barriers and boundaries they face in their mind. The removal of these boundaries and barriers is essential in creating conversations around mental health and helping each to drive forward with positive change.The role of creativity in this is as a vehicle for expressing feelings and truths that may not be as easy to express in other ways, chipping away at removing these boundaries.
One artist who does exactly this is Paola Paredes. The Ecuadorian photographer seeks the truth in every situation and desires being heard. Realities in their rawest form fuel the narrative behind Paredes works. During the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, this led Paredes to create one of the most stark and vulnerable series of works possible from the situation. The ‘Today is Hard’ series of photographs acknowledges the turbulent time the world has been living in- whether this is from an increase in anxiety and mental health symptoms or physical symptoms as a result of contracting the virus. The photographs aim to expose these inner boundaries and barriers that we all faced in one way or another day to day. One photograph in the series features a close shot of the artist’s chest with an overlay of text that reads “My chest hurts – I’m tired of not knowing if it’s anxiety or Covid. It's a feeling of pressure. Sometimes burning”. The artist is externalising her deepest worries here in an intimate photograph, something that may normally be private or invisible to identify with others who may have the same thoughts that they’re not alone. Another photograph in the series simply shares details of what medication the artist has – a jet black background illuminates the pills separated into two sections – Covid and Depression and Anxiety. Again, this is something many will be able to identify with yet don’t talk about, taking tablets to manage both their mental and physical health.
barriers are something artist Kim Noble does across all bodies of work. At a young age, Noble was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). In simple terms this means that the main personality of the person splits into several parts each having a definite barrier between them, in other words, each has its own distinctive traits and is its own person. This has an incredible result in that Kim produces the work of 14 different personalities/artists from one body. She embraces this openly and on her professional website where you might normally see a section titled ‘my work’ it’s titled ‘our work’, each personality has a different name and category of work. She also speaks in the tense that these are different people and that each artist, with their own style, is unaware of the other. Noble has also secured a big media presence to share her message (through channels such as Vice and ITV) that it’s ok to be proud of this and that by embracing these inner boundaries which are quite literal in this sense, in another sense she is breaking down the invisible boundaries inside her brain that people otherwise may not know about – she isn’t hiding anything and in fact, the creative process helps with her own journey. Below you can see some examples of work from six of these different artists and can hopefully clearly see the vast differences between their artistic style, intention, and subject.
The invisible boundaries in our minds will perhaps never be 100% fully transparent as we learn to deal with our own tendencies and characteristics throughout life and are still getting to know how we work. However, artists like Paredes and Noble are both creating breakthrough works that not only demonstrate we are all different have our own boundaries and barriers but that this is something to celebrate. We are all the same and as one despite our differences and the common experience of reality and being human draws us together the more conversations like this are encouraged. With these ideas swimming between more people, the invisible boundaries from before now become more of an open door which we can see leads to progress.