Adapting begins with an adjustment
that is almost imperceptible.
A framework exists. I am trying to work out how to fit into it.
I modify my movements, reduce the range of some, and prioritise others.
At first, I sense what is holding me back.
Then I get used to it.
Through constant repetition, a limit may cease to be perceived as such.
I had become so used to fitting into
the mould that I had come to believe it took the
shape of my body.
This confusion interests me.
Adaptation is initially a response to a
situation. But when it is repeated, something
changes. What was a response
becomes a way of doing things. What came from
outside begins to be recognised as
one’s own.
I am thinking of the bodies once confined within
corsets.
Tightly laced, the corset restricted
the range of certain movements and
could hinder breathing. Worn
over a long period, it could also alter the
figure.
The body was confined within it, but it learnt to
breathe within the space allowed to it.
It is this transformation that matters to me.
We continue to breathe.
We continue to move.
But differently.
I know this sensation physically: to
restrain oneself, to bend, to hold one’s breath, to limit
a movement even before it encounters that
which might stop it.
Eventually, the body anticipates.
It no longer needs to touch the walls to
know the space allotted to it.
What contains it becomes part of the way it
moves.
I rediscover this mechanism when I draw.
The format, the tool, my medium, what is already
present: every drawing encounters
conditions to which my gesture must
respond.
Some of them unsettle me.
They force me to look for alternatives,
disrupt a familiar solution, open up a
direction I would not have encountered without
them.
They expand my possibilities.
Others constrain the gesture.
A response works. I repeat it. It
becomes familiar. Little by little, I no longer even feel
what lies beyond.
The response becomes a habit.
The habit becomes second nature.
I may then mistake an ingrained way of doing things
for a necessity, a repetition for a
preference, a learnt form for my
own way of doing things.
That is where my attention must shift.
I look at what it no longer attempts.
The directions it dismisses before
exploring them. The movements it shortens.
The possibilities it gives up on before
even encountering them.
The limit is no longer merely before the gesture.
It operates within its full scope.
I recognise in this something that goes beyond
the sheet of paper.
I’ve trained myself to fit into
frames, to meet expectations, to become
compatible with what already existed.
Through constant adjustments, the boundary has
become blurred between what came from me and what
I had learnt to become.
Like the body beneath a corset, the gesture can
take on the shape of that which has long
contained it.
It continues to move.
It continues to breathe.
But within a confined space.
So drawing becomes a place of
experimentation.
I can explore a direction I had abandoned.
Let a movement go further.
Shift a habit. Not to stop
my hand where it had previously stopped.
I can seek out what returns when the
gesture ceases to restrain itself.
I do not seek to remove all the
constraints. Some make invention
possible.
I seek to recognise those that stifle.
Those that restrict the gesture enough
that it eventually forgets it could have gone
further.
Simply breaking free from the constraint is not enough.
We must also rediscover what has been curtailed.
Rediscover a breath.
Rediscover a movement.
To rediscover a range of motion.
Drawing becomes this quest.
To test how far the gesture can go when it
stops holding back.
Deferred mourning.
‘I thought I was mourning my mother’s death.
Without realising it, I was entering the beginning of my own life.’
Sometimes, certain forms of grief remain on hold for a long time, as if a part of us refuses to accept the reality of it. Sometimes, neither time nor words are enough. Only an aesthetic experience can create the necessary opening. This text recounts the moment
