Exercise Two

A list of the things that make me feel bad, anxious and ashamed.

I feel ashamed when I react impulsively.

I feel ashamed when I say something stupid.

I feel ashamed when I’m being awkward.

I feel ashamed to say what’s on my mind, especially in a larger group.

I feel ashamed of my nose. That's why when I laugh I usually hide my face.

I feel ashamed being around exciting people just because I feel so boring around them.

Sometimes I would love a fancy outfit and then go outside and feel bad because I am scared to be judged again.

I feel so self-conscious about my skin, because I have scars on my legs and every single time I go out in shorts or a skirt I keep thinking how bad they look.

I don’t feel beautiful when I go out without makeup. Before when I did it the immediate question I would receive was: “OMG are you ok? You look sick!”

I feel ashamed of my obsessive relationship with food. This relationship was extremely messy and heavy in the past and I feel really ashamed to talk about it.

I feel ashamed to let my best friend know that I don’t always agree with her attitude. I feel ashamed to confront her about certain things that bother me because I don’t want to ruin our relationship.

I feel ashamed to let my ex partner know that his expectations made me feel shit and that I often feel unwanted now.

I feel ashamed to talk about my loneliness and happiness for that matter.

I feel ashamed to do this project. I don’t want to be perceived as a self-centered whiny loser.

In her book (The Gifts of Imperfection) Brene Brown talks about the importance of recognizing our shame and fears. According to her, we would never be truly happy if we keep running away from the things that worry us and make us feel small. She claims that if we don’t acknowledge our shame we allow it to control us. Personally, this thought resonates with the way I deal with my insecurities. I often try to isolate myself from my thoughts as much as possible when my anxiety kicks in. I thought that if I attempt to ignore my fears I will eventually forget about them. Some days this has worked, other days it wasn’t that successful. After reading Brene Brown’s book I felt a certain realization: “But of course you can’t solve and outgrow your insecurities because you never talk about them. Being quiet had been a defence mechanism but that does not always work” (she also spoke about the importance of communication as humans tend to be rather social and that social communication is deeply integrated within our roots- something very natural when I think about it). This is why I decided to focus precisely on these ideas: embracing my shame and communicating about it. What I did initially was just to sit down and write about all the things that make me feel bad in one way or another. As a result, my journey of mending my relationship with myself and my happiness consciously began when I finished that list. To my surprise seeing the things I was so desperately trying to run away from did not feel bad at all. In a way it was even liberating. Of course true self-love cannot be cultivated in a day, but it seemed like a good place to start. Being honest with myself turned out to be a good start. Because of that unexpected positivity I encountered within the practice, I decided to extend it within my mending gesture videos and explore more creative ways of honesty.

The first video I created visually depicts me writing down my shame and fears and then turning the words into a colorful flower garden. After writing them down I simply stared doodling, up to the point when the initial words were no longer recognizable. Personally, this was a very interesting experience as it allowed me to look at my insecurities as a work in progress, a garden full with flowers that are not yet in bloom. Through transforming the words into these free form doodles I kept thinking about the importance of embracing a journey of positivity, one that will lead to happiness and success. Because the doodles were free-form I had no initial expectation of how the final visuals would look like. This is why I decided to fully surrender to my color charcoals and let them do the work. My mind was not the instrument anymore, it was simply up to the paper and the movement of the pigments. This turned out to be a lovely experience for myself, as I truly enjoyed this easy-going loose style of drawing (I often get stuck due to my expectations, easy-going is not my thing). To some extent it felt like a small meditative practice, and despite the heavy topic I felt truly inspired after.

The second video illustrates the same idea of embracing the things I am ashamed for, but does so in a contrastingly different way when compared to the first clip. As much as the first video is soft and a little nostalgic, my second mending gesture is a much more modern and highly experimental approach to personal honesty. To create it I used old footage I had on my phone. The videos I meant to include in one project or another and never did (you could call them the outcasts). I have always been fascinated by film and especially the weirder, hard to make sense of parts of the cinematic world. This is why doing something like that felt nice because I knew that there were no boundaries and I could let my imagination loose. In a way this also felt good because often in university I get stuck on the idea that I need to create good work, high quality pieces that are worthy to be seen. Somehow this expectation drains me from the creative energy I would need to produce this awesome work. It also makes me feel incredibly self-conscious about my performance as an artist. This is why the spontaneity and freedom I had while in the process of editing the video did exactly the opposite: charged me and left me feeling more creative. Feeling like I want do do more work like that. And learn how to do it better.