Handing Dogma Over to Questioning

Dogma wraps us safely in our stories of certainty. But it restricts us from the critical reflections we need - and are responsible for - to evolve ourselves and our interactions with the world.

When we sculpt a story that we’ve assigned ourselves, and held onto so tightly, out into the visual we create the opportunity to interact with it as its own living, breathing, complex organism, rather than an abstract set of concepts locked up away from sight.

As we face it, fiddle with it, speak to it, taste it, we allow for a dialogue that is open for meaningful deconstruction and construction. 

We hand dogma over to questioning.

Not only can this unraveling profoundly destabilise the story’s grip and credibility, but it invites possibility into what could be released and nurtured in its place.

What dogmatic story of yours needs handing over to questioning?

A Creative Bone in My Body

‘I don’t have a creative bone in my body…’

We worry about presenting a ‘finished product’ of anything we do, including ourselves. Moving along, we realize (hopefully) the significance of process – the actual doing. A finished artwork can hold volumes about an experience we want to represent. But the process of making is equally – if not more - revealing of our internal structures.

How are we choosing the materials we’re making with?
Are we hesitant or are we impulsive with our decisions?
What reactions do we have towards our work along the way?
What happens to our emotional state from when we first started to when we finished?

There is meaning in the making.

Revealing the Internalised

What happens to you when you don’t want to let anyone down?
What happens, when you try to hold it all together?
What happens, when you can’t say ‘No’?

So much about how we internalise certain experiences reveals itself in the process of making. Even more so than the finished product itself.

What choice of material do we go with? What do we leave out?
What physical process do we engage?
Do we shove in? Do we rip apart?
What kind of energy are you feeding into your artwork?
Is the object light? Or does it get heavier as you go?

‘The wire altering its shape to allow room for what’s forced in.
Pieces contorted to fit in.
Parts protruding out.
Testing limits.
The more I pushed in, the more I forgot what were in the inner layers.’

The Penis-to-Coral Mechanism

Art making can reveal our plainest habits in the most unanticipated of ways.

A participant was working with clay, wringing it into a form softer than the chunk I provided, only to find it moulding into a cylindrical shape. 'It reminded me of a penis!’ she said with surprise, ‘So I tore it into smaller pieces and rebuilt it into what now looks like a coral.'

Now, I doubt this means her pattern is to contemplate cutting actual penises into smaller pieces. Hmm, perhaps I should've asked.. 🙄

BUT after sharing her process and a few laughs with the group, I asked if it meant something to her that as soon she sensed the discomfort - that came about after the object was interpreted as 'penis' - she deconstructed and reshaped the entire thing.

What triggered the discomfort? What does 'penis' represent? What if we just called it 'cylinder shape'? Is 'coral' a better option? Is it even about Penis vs Coral or is it about something else, like the social aspect of presenting a penis shaped object to a group you haven't met before?

Either way, either choice - to stay with or to transform the moment - was rich with meaning and carried importance to what she needed in that instant.

The ending artwork is hardly the only point where information lives. The WHOLE process - the interpretations we project, the choices made, the physical and emotional qualities held in each moment, the environment you’re in. THAT is where we get a snapshot of how you are in certain moments.

Everything I noticed was only a slice of my experiencing this participant. But to me, the Penis to Coral strategy- I’m gonna call it that for a while - represented something we all do: Quickly changing a moment/situation into a more bearable one before studying it fully. It applies to moments beyond the clay, in relationships, in work, in self-talk and so on.

And heck, don't we all use that strategy one way or another.