u/auniakahn

Heritage as Survival

20 years in the art world teaches you numerous things. 🧐 The two that changed everything for me: your roots 🍃 are yours whether you claim them or not, and your artistic 🎨 voice is a living document.

For most of my career, traditional materials could have killed me. 💀 Digital was never my preference, it was my only option. Losing the use of traditional mediums also removed my natural instincts with play, mark making, and physical media itself. I did not have the ability to naturally explore my artistic voice.

A proper diagnosis and medications ❤️ changed that a few years ago. When I started using traditional mediums again after almost 2 decades, I tried to replicate my digital work. Replication was a killer of my voice. The therapy, escape, and joy all went quiet.

Unsatisfied, I start thinking deeply about who I was, what I wanted to create and more importantly my roots.

My roots always were elusive and disconnected to me. Growing up in a very violent home and learning when I was 15 that was adopted and lied to for so many years was crushing. Heritage felt like something to escape and hope to survive rather than carry.

Then I started looking at the present. 😍🏠 My home is a maximalist cathedral, every wall and shelf filled with art, color, pattern and objects with meaning. The way I dress, the way I live, everything layered and symbolic and intensely mine. So why wasn't my art?

It clicked, it was always there but I spent the better part of my life rejecting it. So I dug out a box of photographs 📸 I hadn't looked at since my mother died in 2013. I already knew the answer the moment I asked the question.

I found the image I was looking for and it was everything. 🤩 I was sitting at a bright green children's art desk, sewing something I can no longer remember. Horrible wood paneling as my backdrop to the elegant lamp shade, aloe vera plant, gaudy candy dish, Polish tapestry and the brightly blue 💙 flowered chairs that I loved.

When I looked at this image it clicked, my roots and voice have been there all along. I just had to return to meet them and plant 🌿 them in healthier, more fertile soil.

I am the gardener of my roots.

Who were you before you were asked to make yourself smaller?

The thing about suppression is that it is not the same as disappearance and you did not lose those parts of yourself. They waited in the dark and learned patience while you gained the strength and courage to reach inside and liberate yourself - every bit of who you were down to your bones.

You have everything you need in every breath you take. You were always fire waiting for you to finally exhale and light everything 🔥 ablaze.

---
Everything Starved Of Air Came Back Breathing Fire
Acrylic, Gouache, Colored Pencil, and Gold Ink on Panel
12 x 16 in / 30.48 x 40.64 cm

It is interesting how we are often placed in a box. Often by society, but sometimes by ourself.

We are often placed inside a box with four sides, a tight top, and a flat and uninteresting bottom. Sometimes we do not know we are in there, almost trapped.

Overall, as human beings we are not box-able.

We are very complex, nuanced creatures.

However, over time we might gravitate toward one thing or another and start to fear moving outside the walls and borders of that box. But the truth is that we only grow, we only move forward, we only find what we are looking for when we are willing to tear the walls down and feel vulnerable.

Don't let anyone ask you to choose between the various pieces of yourself, to simplify, to leave the stranger and wilder parts of yourself at the door.

Remember, you were always exactly the right amount of everything.

You are not box-able.

_____
'The Holy Act Of Refusing To Be Only One Thing'
Gouache, acrylic, and color pencil, 11x14"
Showing at Thinkspace Gallery.