start

Starting with making a mindmap about mending, I began to think of previous works I made, in which I always had a strong connection with the material. I put stuff together, different aspects and sometimes materials that stand far from each other to create my work. I always focused quite a lot on literal mending without thinking about it on a deeper level. I started my mindmap with collecting some literal mending works I made in the past, and now I want to focus on my metaphorical connection with materials.

I am now intrigued by a more metaphorical meaning of mending and how I feel pressured by constituted ideas pressed inside my head over the length of my life. I feel like I created a lot of my previous works to escape a sort of aesthetically pleasing necessity that I had before. I felt and still often feel like my art needs to look a certain way to be classified as good. I also sometimes feel pressured by what other people have already accomplished and found myself comparing, which is what I want to take distance off. I feel that this pressures me and often results in me creating less instead of more. I enjoyed reading about the article in which she spoke about materials as vessels, as I truly relate to this idea. I enjoy working with natural materials, as I feel they make my art more connect to the ground.

I feel like through drawing I can let my dreams and fantasy flow freely, which is a great practice for me to let go of expectations and conventions. I feel like I have multiple ritualistic ways of freeing myself and becoming closer to my true self.

It not only within my artistic practice that I want to reconnect with myself. I also within the quarantaine times feel the urge to reinvent myself as I have no one to judge me for the way I look. I feel a new interest within fashion and within this project I also might want to focus on that a bit.

First animation tryout

I decided to mend the relationship between myself and my work. I feel like I have neglected a side of me that wants to simply create without overthinking if it's good or bad. I missed learning skills and I missed drawing. To mend my relationship with my work, I need to get out of my comfort zone and learn and do something I have not done before in my artistic career. I want to learn how to animate my drawings. My drawings are important to me cause they let me explain my imagination freely. Combining drawing with learning a new skill like animation feels like a great mending exercise and technique to get closer to my artistic self and discover new parts of this self. I am going to try to let go of creating something perfect, but simply trying and overcoming the need to create something perfect.

Decolonization as Care

I resonated with the part in the article in which she spoke about materials as vessels. I enjoy working with natural materials, as I feel they make my art more connect to the ground.

A Critical Pedagogy of Place

I decided to choose this article for the theory assignment because I feel like a lot of the relationships within myself I need to mend are the result of the education I have had in my life, more precisely the way I have interpreted these forms of education and the impact they have had on me. I was intrigued by Gruenewald's words about critical pedagogy and I feel like I myself can think more critically about the education system I am currently living in. I firstly wanted to address Willem de Kooning or another educational institution in my letter, but I decided to address the letter to myself as I am the one choosing to stay inside this sytem and I want to grow and expand my own thoughts surrounding the topic.