Currently, I am a bit unsure as to where this project is headed. I have a few ideas of what i would like it to be about, however I do not quite know where it is going to end up.
I have noticed a lot in the past couple of years, that I connect quite strongly with nature, I believe this may have come from growing up in Brittany where I was always surrounding by natural environments and would feel myself more when going for walks around my village.
When I go for my walks, alone, I do not feel like I need to prove myself to anyone, it’s my time to sit and just be me, without worrying about annoying anyone or upsetting people; I can be just be alone with my thoughts and allow myself to talk through my worries without any judgement.
I would like to use this project to express myself through images of nature and possible archival images of my childhood. Growing up, my siblings and I were victims of severe mental abuse and this has scared us for life, we struggle to met ‘societies’ standards as we do not necessarily understand what is normal and what is not. Through my images, I would like to express different anxiety symptoms - dissociation, confusion, social awkwardness, isolation, etc….
By bringing in images of my childhood, I would like to express how these are all symptoms I felt as a child, which (now that I understand more) is not normal for children to feel. We were always suppressed and made to believe that we had no authority, which is still the case today, in my early 20’s. I still feel like this little child who has no place in this world, who is always in the way and who always gets on peoples nerves.
I would like for the image to contrast with one another with the images of a child who may look happy, but inside her head she has no idea what will happen next, if my parents would be in a bad mood, or a good mood. That feeling of unknown was always so terrifying.
For this project, I will be collaborating with a Creative Arts Practice student who specialises in Creative Writing, we will be working on creating poems or just general text to go alongside the images to help create this contrast with the childlike innocence and demonstrating the voices that I hear in my head and that take over my life most of the time.
In all, the ideas I have for this project are very scattered and need to be put together, but overall, I would like to demonstrate how a child should never feel these feelings, I would also like to use this as a form of therapy to teach myself, that even though I have grown up to believe that so much is my fault, and that I was such an awful child is not true, I was only a child and should not have been shouted at for little things, nor should I have been blamed for things that are normal for a child to do. I still struggle to believe that I was not wrong and I struggle to connect with my younger self and to sympathise with her and so i would like to take this opportunity to teach myself to be kinder to all versions of myself.