On Becoming

Virus/Portal 2020

Who are we and why are we here? Big questions for big times. I feel like I am creating portals, openings which lead through darkness into the light.

At the beginning of this week I was still in the artists residency at Bilpin. I went there initially to respond to the bushfire affected landscape.  Yet I found myself creating circular papers with orange seams which were meant to reference rocks in the landscape, but instead became circles of virus molecules. 

Onto these I poured some grey recycled paper pulp. It suddenly dawned on me that this pulp was made from pulverised bank statements. Here was the global economic crisis, embedded inside a virus which in turn became a portal.

A friend pointed out that I have been unconsciously creating portals for years. In 2016 my final work for the Bachelor of Visual Arts Honours were circular patterns of fractals created from recording the sounds made during the process of paper making.  A portrait of the earth and its vibrational energy - chaotic yet sublime.

Earlier this year I was making circles of paper with silken threads embedded into them, stitching on images of the silkworm moth and its cocoon. Portals representing freedom as well as pause buttons for reflection on the unbalanced state of a world soon to tip into crisis.

Now here we are in this state of unreality. All systems have been shut down and cut adrift from their everyday structures. People are left untethered, spiralling in freefall or spinning in panic. 

On Wednesday we were told the artist residency was to close in line with new government regulations. I packed up my makeshift studio and left early on Thursday, driving through towns with closed up shops. Stopping for petrol at service centres with drive through queues at McDonalds, always sanitising my hands.

I had been in my cocoon of creativity which was now unravelling as I reached home and listened to the news. I went into shut down as I processed the constantly changing crisis. It has taken me days to regain my equilibrium, walking along the beach in the mornings and feeling the sunshine reappear to lift my spirits. 

I pick up my needle and begin to stitch my circular papers, stitching jigsaw pieces of the world in place. These become weird shaped parachutes with trailing anchor lines, keeping me afloat in a sky of turbulent clouds. I float above, watching as people awaken to the light and realise that this crisis embodies opportunity. 

We are being called to become who we truly are. To untether from conventional ways of being, to instead look for signs, the lights that beckon as runways are lit up showing us new directions on this journeys of discovery.

For this is the time we discover our purpose. We become ourselves. We were always there, just waiting for this perfect opportunity to unfold.

The world upside down and in pieces….it’s a work in progress