I believe that my art process is deeply embedded in looking for a feeling I can further project through my art. I am seeking to experience an emotion and then being able to modify, reshape, deform, stage, enhance it to create an authentic experience. In the past years I have researched diverse moods including anger, sadness, rage, further exploring agitation, distress, helplessness, trying to find a perfect balance between my own way of processing my inner thoughts and projecting them into my artistic creation and development. I could not find that thing, the balance, for the past 3 years, since I would either be too personally invested into a certain emotion or I would not feel it deeply enough to consider it an authentic theme. The first key word was trauma, then I started researching negative emotions and their origins, but what I also discovered is that people do not feel drawn towards art of sadness and pain, since many of them are not honest with themselves, denying their negative emotions, or hiding them, subconsciously trying to live their lives as if they do not exist.
From the beginning of my art journey I had felt a deep connection with controversy. I kept reaching towards what’s forbidden, stigmatized or misjudged. I was keen on creating realistic art so that it would be more understandable to the biggest audience possible, however, my artworks began to become very personal, since I would also use my own image in my art a lot. At a certain point I lost the feeling that I was evolving, I got stuck in a loop of my own negativity mixed with ambition and creativity, until I accidentally saw a Hayao Miyazaki retirement film, ‘The Boy and the Heron’, 2023. I have never seen any anime nor Otaku culture oriented art before, and I was never planning to due to boiling prejudice and my ego. After all, I was working with intense emotions, with the concept of how it feels to be a human, with a focus on pain, and I tried to make my art the most realistic possible. Animated, colorful movies did not sound appealing at all. Yet that film felt as if my whole subconsciousness melted in a lucid dream, the visuals were disturbing, and hypnotizing, but in an unknown to me way. I had only known animated art through Disney or Pixar, which is highly innocent and monotonous, or adult animation, which is characterized by saturated dialogues, both being a cartoon representation of western bloom of overstimulating media. ‘The Boy and the Heron’ was different.
In the process of researching human experiences and emotional expressions, I was often highlighting the theme of subconsciousness. A great part of our minds is occupied by very unobvious and unrecognized feelings that some might misinterpret as delusions, others as creativity, while I believe that that subconscious part characterizes us as humans. I have seen almost all other films created by Hayao Miyazaki, creator of Ghibli Studio animation studio, and that was the subconscious element that his art made me experience. The unobvious mix of ambiguity with artistic freedom and boldness that is presented through uncanny valley themed patterns, where life is just slightly more saturated delivering an unforgettable experience.
At that moment I started rethinking my art, I came back to more colours, resumed exploring dreams, and themes I have abandoned for the idea of making tragically realistic and relatable art. The world of art became dreamy and I started enjoying learning and increasing my knowledge again. I felt like I entered the honeymoon phase with my art again, when I saw Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre and I started seeing the world in different colours. That was the moment I realized I am able to connect what I was working on for the last three years with my newest fascination. With the otherworldly, unintuitive, almost astral animation. The key to combining these both turned out to be fear. By implementing aspects of fear in my art I shifted my focus onto less rational and down to earth emotion which is directly related to subconsciousness and subliminal self. Fear is known to enhance imagination, alter images, or sounds, it turns shadows into living creatures, develops phobias, building them on traumas or denied memories. And fear is strongly associated with the technical opposite of dreams - nightmares.
What makes fear so special is how universal it is. People experience fear from the moment they are born, it is a great part of our instincts. Children happen to have unexplainable phobias, unforgettable nightmares, and with time, when the concept of fear changes for each individual, it also shows a kind of maturing, when the fears are shifting from unexplainable and unrecognizable to more realistic and future related fears. Moreover, the strong presence of fears in the process of growing up, makes the emotion way more undeniable and straightforward. While there are many symbols strongly evoking emotions like sadness or joy, I believe that horror is much more accessible when it comes to artificially inducing it. Since it is so based on the concept of not knowing, overthinking and oversaturating, provoking fear is a game with one’s mind.
I have heard that my art is too dark, too disturbing or uncomfortable, yet I feel like it just fits in with what I have researched in the Japanese art world. This strong sense of belonging is my current focus. I am eager to research Japanese culture, art and language and work with a completely new perspective. I also understood how significant the use and character of language was and I started learning Japanese, to be able to further explore the culture with the most understanding possible. The sixth semester will be my long term project where I explore Otaku and research Japanese history and culture from the perspective of horror and fear. I am traveling to Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto in May to explore my interests even more and try to grasp the true feeling of not only Japanese art from western perspective, but also the local culture and views. I am experiencing a feeling of inclusion and passion that I hope will fruitfully help me in further learning and participation in an internship or a residency in Japan.