Aqui(quase): anxiety as a pictorial tool

• Autor(a) principal: Labianca, Lidia Maria
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/39801
• topic: Anxiety; Abstract expressionism; Painting; Autoethnographic diary

As a young woman who lives abroad alone, I am experiencing anxiety triggered by the western stereotypes. The research I did concerning the production of art in relationship with anxiety, raised different approaches. While studying the Mood Art Gallery’s curatorial approach, I realized that my anxiety boosts the act of painting, it seeks to get out and not be calmed down, as therapists suggest. Furthermore, the Anxious Abstraction Exhibition (2019) revealed a variety of ways of relating to anxiety. Namely, Salman Torr a contemporary Iraqi artist, emigrant in NYC. Queer and living alone abroad, he feels called to the artistical action revisiting the Modernist way. Indeed, Abstract Expressionism guided me in revealing my inner-repressed-expression on a canvas. Referring to Greenberg and Cockcroft I compared two different ways of addressing Abstract Expressionism to produce insights for my own way of relating to it. Moreover, in Joan Mitchell’s production I found an artist that works with a similar inquietude. She lived in an abstract expressionist’s mood that differed from mainstream approaches. Only after her death her artistic production got notorious, when mainstream interpretations of abstract expressionism got challenged by other approaches. This research led me to the conclusion that the artistic production triggered by anxiety is diverse and can be perceived in a multiplicity of approaches. On the other hand, my approach differentiates from the mainstream approaches because art-therapy is conventionally conceived as the solution to cure anxiety, while in my production anxiety is instrumental for insights. In other words, the artwork I produce will be precisely about anxiety, without attempting to erase it. My inner fight with anxiety seeks for art production to get out, it wants to talk – not to be quieted down. Two paintings, Contrappunto (2021) and Must be Love on the Brain (2022) are discussed in this research.