Making art has felt so necessary in my life. Over the past year or so I’ve slowly re-immersed myself in the creative process. I’ve written, doodled, knitted, crocheted, paper-mached, I’ve done a lot. And I did it all in the pursuit of escaping the hell of living with PTSD and active trauma.
Writing has traditionally been my go to outlet when things get tough but in all my trying to write or even talk about what’s been happening I’ve struggled with finding all the words to communicate the deep and complex and honestly horrific trauma I live with. I try to write more than my bullshit poems but all I can muster is inane details, true nonsense with lots of run on sentences. Writing is definitely therapeutic but it’s also triggering and making things with my hands, that’s been different. Creating has been like a cheat code and the best part is I don’t worry about how someone will interpret my art because the making is for me and the viewing that’s for you. Some abstract and universal you. Whereas with my writing I always feel so intimately intwined with the reader and I often feel a responsibility to explain myself, which I’m not even very good at.
But my visual art feels worlds apart. I feel confident in the physicality of my pieces, in the way they take up space, and how they refuse to explain themselves. My art, my making, I don’t feel a need to justify it. It seems as degrading as asking me to justify my existence. Fuck you for asking me to fade away. Art does speak for itself even if you insist your dog could make it and claim to hate all modern art (you don’t you probably hate contemporary art and your wrong about that too).
Trauma has put me in a perpetual state of isolation. Even when I’m able to push past the negative thoughts and seemingly connect with others I feel separated. I struggle so much with the duality of how I feel versus what I know. Trauma has made me a perpetual prisoner.
It’s definitely a cliche but art has allowed me to reach past those barriers and connect with others, even if only for a moment. I’m sure lots of people, who hold very paternalistic colonialist ideas, would prefer I isolate myself behind closed doors with certificates on the wall declaring the space fit for therapy of the whitest shade. But I refuse to capitulate to an ideology of individualism in which we pathologize basic human needs and manipulate potential revolutionaries to abandon community for boundaries.
It’s laughable to imagine isolation could heal trauma.
When I was younger I was oddly concerned about people being willing to show up in the worst moments and now as an adult who has gone through some shit I can say unequivocally there are plenty of people to show up in the worst of times but not very many people want to show up for the daily grind. And sadly pop psychology is making people believe they should never reach out to their friends when things are tough. That our emotions must be managed and it’s our responsibility alone to find solace and happiness. We may die alone but we sure as fuck can’t live alone.
Pushing myself to be in community with those around me. Prioritizing friendship. Deconstructing relationship structures. That is healing. Love and joy feel like revolutionary acts when done outside of Western systems. Knowing ourselves means to embrace your place in the greater organism of human kind, for who we are is understood through the roles we embody in our community.
The pieces I made for How We Hold speak to my experiences of community. Of how others choose to hold space for me or not. Of how I understand myself in community. There is embrace and brutal reprisals and they constitute an entanglement encapsulated in the place and time of my pieces.
I’m in the early stages of sharing what I make with the world. The opportunity to show at Quidi Vidi Studios was amazing and I’ll always have a place in my heart for this collection. This show was very much just the beginning though. I have so much more to say and it’s only going to get weirder.
Thank you to those who have made the space. And despite my ongoing weariness in my own value assured me of my worth.
More information on my Project page
Kathryn D'Agostino 
Leave a comment