For this assignment we had to produce drawings or 3D objects, using maps, guides, dress making patterns, instructions for electrical appliances and etc. We must pay attention to the linear and tonal qualities of these materials incorporating them into the work.

I decided to work with dress-making patterns because I had many and felt confident dealing with them as a person who had a hobby with a sewing machine. In this exercise, I witness again how powerful is our sub conciseness. At least for me, my creativity is very much driven by my current state of mind: thoughts and emotions I have been going through within particular days and weeks. For the last month, my mind and heart released some old, deep-rooted psychological pattern, such as fear of someone’s anger when you allow yourself to be yourself. I realized this fear had been my oldest and main psychological issue, blocking me from feeling genuinely happy and making me waste my energy doing things I didn’t need, but those who surrounded me did demand me to do them. That fear has been a hidden reason for me to be prone to manipulation, which is always traumatizing and unpleasant. Thus the work below channels my idea about myself, which came to me in May.

I practise Japanese Ēnso drawing because this is a spiritual practice and a good exercise to strengthen my hand-brain coordination and improve my linear skills. I have prepared two Ēnso drawings on A2 size multi-media paper sheets using red ink. The circle is one of the symbols of whole and complete – this is what I think about the Soul. The Soul is complete and whole, undivided and undividable. From these ēnso circles, I developed two sketches to signify the Soul. My idea was to cover them with transparent, dull-coloured dress-making patterns to show that we are imposed to” wear” patterns instead of revealing our true Divine nature as a Soul. Since early childhood, we are exposed to the oppressive idea and mechanism of substituting our positive natural spark for certain behavioural patterns. Everyone is made to accept and live in a dictatorship of so-called “rational choices” – we are constantly told how to react and how not to, what to say and what not to say, what to do and what not to do- and all of these in the paradigm of “be quiet”, “don’t talk loud”, “don’t ask”, “don’t cry”, “don’t be nervous”, “don’t think about it”, “you want too much”, “you are too demanding”, ” you must be sweet all the time”, ” you must clap your hands when he/she/they talk”, ‘you are not normal if you get angry”, “you are too much”, “there is too much of you”. This paradigm of oppression is designed and built to make us forget about our true nature and leave our potential as a Soul with a Divine Spark. People now call it “matrix”. The matrix exists to manipulate us.

I glued the dress-making patterns with a transparent glue. I distributed the glue unevenly to make some patches of the underlaying colour to be seen more intense. The glue here has a literal meaning of how strongly our unhealthy, blocking psychological patterns are glued to us. he pattern is transparent, but strongly present, blocking our freedom.

These works are interesting to mix in collages I make using the app “Photo Booth”- you can fond some new looks below. I see that there is a potential to make this kind of work in large scale, adding more patterns and details.