#12 CRISIS AND SURVIVAL

When I started this path, a little by chance, I did it also with the recklessness of those who did not know that each brick not only I would have to place it alone, but I would also have to knead it and build it myself.

I have always been of the opinion that recklessness helps to do things with less effort, because when you are too aware everything seems to weigh more.
A little when you make the plank, if you stare at the timer, the seconds seem to be endless, while if you keep your eyes closed, everything goes (almost) smoothly.

Anyway, I've opened my eyes and I'm looking at the timer, and what makes the seconds flow slower, keeping the abdomen tight, is this forced lockdown.

When I moved to England months ago, I was in charge.
I felt like I was a little girl going through a box full of toys, thinking about all the opportunities that could have come my way.
Then the Covid came back to the charge and not only forced us to lock ourselves in the house, decided to decline in numerous variations that have made the manna of the vaccine, an experiment like "make it or break it".

Going forward with a positive attitude has been hard but you have to find a way to continue walking because the risk of getting bogged down in the quicksand of the mind is very high.

As much as I am a person who needs outside incentives, I also have a mind full of ideas and that never loses heart (thanks to the dominant right hemisphere).
So, given the impossibility of traveling, given the impossibility of meeting inspiring people to be inspiration for my work, you know what I did?
You probably already know if you've been following my Instagram posts.

But in case you were distracted and didn't have time to read my brilliant captions under my posts I repeat it.

But I start at the beginning.
Since I was a child I have always had a particular affection for Africa, and when I say young, I say really young (like 3-4 y.o.) but I must have already said this in the previous blog article.
The dream of visiting the black continent has always been in my thoughts but it takes the right preparation and especially the right company.
Needless to say, this opportunity never showed up yet.

The fact is that over the years I have accumulated notions, faces seen through the screen and the eyes of others.

So I decided to do an experiment, a little angry about the impossibility to travel and to be 26 years old and have never been to the continent that fascinates me the most (Forgive me for generalizing on Africa, but if I had to list all the countries that I would like to visit, we would never end).
I decided to eradicate the cornerstone of my first collection, the photo-memories collected during my trip to Thailand, and imagine faces that I could hypothetically meet during my trip.

A bit psychopathic, I admit, but the lines came up easily, almost as if I had actually met those people.
Years and years of observation have sedimented in my head faces that have merged with each other.

Obviously the concept of fixing the memories (in this case the fantasies) remained unchanged, the only difference was that the faces merged into only lines. I really felt like I met those people, touched those faces and smiled at those kids.

It's absurd how the brain adapts and creates incentives even in situations of total absence of external input.

Was this experiment-survival successful?!
You have to say that, you never really know what people think when they look at a work of art, because it's so subjective.
But I can say that this kind of survival has helped me to give myself a push towards the future, to recover the positive attitude that I lost for a few months.
I needed to reinvent to keep living.

The moral of this story is that you often find yourself stuck in situations that do not depend on you (and this is the first time in the twenty-first century where the whole world is in the same situation) and it is permissible to despair because plans have changed or things do not go as you would like, But if you close yourself for a moment and dialogue with your passions, you also find a small opening, a small idea that can make you move forward with your project.
I have learned that the mind can create extraordinary things, even (or above all) in uncomfortable conditions.

Because in the end serenity (and creativity) comes from within!

Ah, I forgot! The collection is called "The spots of Giraffes", it is still on going, but you can see it by clicking below!