To our participants

We get in and out, but you are staying there, at the beginning of your difficult path for change. We sometimes feel that we did not thank you enough for opening up and sharing your stories with us, despite the notion that we are a bridge for sharing them with the rest of the world.

This is our work, meaning it is as much yours as it is the research team’s. We felt it was another unfair happening in your lives that you could not be present in the public exhibitions, having your authorship recognised, collecting all the deserved compliments for your beautiful work.

We are not sure that you will all see this, and that you will have the chance to see the photographs of the interaction of our participative work with the public. In case you browse for some information you might arrive here. And then we want you to know that we haven’t forgotten you. We will go on remembering your faces, your voices, your feelings, and also the joy of doing art side by side.

Our connection is contained in the work. We will go on together.

Benedetta, Vicki, and Susana

Personal idiosyncrasies

Participant 3, Personal Idiosyncrasy, Blind contour portraits of others.

Participant 1, Personal Idiosyncrasy, Blind contour portraits of others.

Participant 2, Personal Idiosyncrasy, Blind contour portraits of others.

Participant 6, Personal Idiosyncrasy, Blind contour portraits of others.

A collaborative possibility in anonymised portraits emerged from the fact that blind contour, a typical exercise in art classes, verifies that each person’s drawings are very similar to each other, while informing very little on the particularities of the subject. Highly idiosyncratic, blind contour displays the first attribute of style, presenting an inner self-portrait as a draftsperson. While being showcased within portraits of others it also sums up the idea that each character is affected by her social relationships, reacting to an environment.

Exhibition at Egham campus

At Royal Holloway Egham campus. The door entering the corridor was decorated with token postcards and an informative short notice sheet.

An unconventional display, it was on show in Dr Cappellini’s office and in the adjacent corridor. Emulating a small art-fair, it used the graphic design items to draw visitors’ attention.

A few samples of original work on objects and of composite portraits. The public activity replicating the latter had place on the left of the desk.

A view of the display from inside the office-project room.

At the entrance, the project’s poster rests on a painter’s easel.

Two examples of the “Personal idiosyncrasy” self-portraits

A view of the corridor, where 2 posters are seen hanging from a clothes’ rail.

Exhibition at Bedford Square

Composite self-portraits drawn from reflection by participants and research team, as part of the art project. A public activity replicates the process during exhibitions.

Views of exhibition show the work on objects and portraits by the participants: originals, and compositions with related quotes, organised in posters.

Thank you Susana Ferraz

This image-text symbolises several significant aspects met during the project: the scope of “objects” to mean general concepts; the necessity of anonymity, which implies names’ redaction; the resilience of self-esteem that triggers a step forward to escape abuse. The design of the postcard was a gift from the designer to the project.

Wanted objects

There was not one single case in this chapter where a wanted object was something never experienced by the participants. In fact, all wanted objects overlapped with lost ones, or previous experiences they wished to repeat.

Missed objects

Missed objects is deeply connected with loved objects, therefore in some cases participants identified drawings deriving from elicitation of this topic as loved objects.

Hated objects

The option of representing hated objects was avoided by the participants for some time. Only in the 4th workshop did they accept the challenge. For most it was a troubling moment, but their later reporting on this subject reflected the positive effect of catharsis. Interestingly, one participant devoted extra time to her drawing, having returned with it for all the following sessions to ask for suggestions on how to depict visually in her painting further aspects she described verbally.