I forget how it feels to be held

Acrylic and oil on canvas

135 x 168 cm I want to tell you about this artwork but first, context.

//// Let me take you back to last year, 2024, a total trial by fire year.

Every month I would sit in the North Sydney office for my therapy/counselling course, eager to learn and connect, heart cracked open as usual, but entirely overstimulated and under resourced. 

With every training weekend that passed I felt like I needed months to process the experiences there, to actually deepen into what I was feeling, to what my truth was and what my pain was telling me.

Only halfway through, realising the familiarity of this space and that my mind was somewhat there in the room but my body was still in year 3. That is, in a formal learning environment, in a room filled with primarily white folks, who I somewhat desperately wanted to be accepted by.

I was born in Penrith in 1996. In 2000 my family moved us to Saudi Arabia. And in 2005 we moved back to Penrith, I’ve told you this before and I will tell you many times again.

When I started school here in year 3, Penrith was a foreign land, though I was treated as the foreigner. My accent was different, my skin was different, my journey was different. There was no counsellor then to help me process this huge change. My parents were busy rebuilding a life.

Somehow since then, I've been living under a condition that I am supposed to think of this place as home, because, after all, I live 15 minutes away from the hospital I was born in. 

But in 2024 I realised, that though I never felt entitled to call myself an immigrant, my story IS one of immigration. And I AM an immigrant.

////  I recently heard Ocean Vuong say that it takes us so long to realise what has happened to us. His words ring true in my ear. Someone understands.

It took me 19 years.

I share all this as an extension of my work. I began this particular piece early last year. I've lived with her in my studio, adding marks infrequently, in the quieter moments of my busy life.

Nothing was planned ahead.

And by the time I made her final stroke in June which just passed, I sobbed.

She titled herself, ‘I forget how it feels to be held.’ Words that emerged as I carry all the loss of life happening across the world. And happening in Palestine.

All the tender, tiny fingers that yearn to wrap around their maker's thumbs. All the eyes slowly peering open, expecting to see clear blue skies and birds dancing overhead, but are instead met with falling sparks and rubble.

This is what I mean when I say artmaking teaches me more about myself than I consciously know.

We’ve all been witness to the destruction of life and livelihood. Chants and cries blaring through our screens and through stories.

It's clear to me now, these works became a reflection on living in a world so numbed to death and loss. Working on them for a year and a half, allowed me a space to process the absurdity of this reality, returning me to my feeling state again and again.

All without my knowing.

It's strange though, that despite being aware of my pain and anger of seeing genocide unfold in real time, I hadn't known how deeply I’ve been carrying it. I hadn't known how my heart aches for all the mothers losing their children in the most violent ways, for all the children whose lives are coloured by trauma, grief and loss. I hadn't known because just as this world has prescribed, I live one thought too far away from my body.

To be quite honest with you, I’m carrying another layer of pain.

Last year I encountered people who wouldn’t call a genocide a genocide. Women, and mothers, who weren’t pained by the horrors, happening in one sense, far away. Unmoved, unconvinced, despite the overwhelming evidence, proof and testimony.

And my heart aches.

I’ve been naïve to believe that all of us bleeding in red means that we all bleed for the same reasons. It hurts to see now, that this isn’t true.

It's from these experiences that I've been slowly able to put into words the following. That I've always been curious about people's dance of labelling themselves as loving or hating people. Now I've come to land in my own version of this - I love people deeply and I am terribly afraid of you all.

/// I cannot wrap this up neatly, there are too many open ended questions.

It's awfully vulnerable to be sharing these works that have come to fruition in the privacy and safety of my studio. If you have any reflections after seeing them, it would be wonderful to hear from you.

In the next post I will share more about how it feels to meet myself through artmaking.