Livia Claesson
instagram.com/liviaclaesson, liviaclaesson.hotglue.me, livia_claes@hotmail.com
"Mom and Dad Kiss" (2020)
I decided to look at my graduation work as a box of memories. Memories made wry by recent experiences. My box containts toys, puzzles, drawings, a couple of cigarettes and a bottle of wine.
Childhood happened and then ended. Suddenly. I do not remember falling out of it. Where was the switch? One moment there was thoughtless joy, the next I'm in my room realising that I am 23 and graduating. Only having been an adult for a handful of years, I now ask myself if I am giving this imposed role justice by the preparation I was given in my younger years. Kids are taught and nurtured into becoming adults: well-rounded, disciplined, mannered and composed. You give a small child a baby doll and they will nurture it the way their mother showed them how to. Playfulness gets replaced by obligations; impulsiveness by thorough analysis. Is play something that must be lost or is there a way for a symbiosis between the child and the adult?
UNDER THE SURFACE: CHILDHOOD AND ITS ROLE IN THE NEED FOR REPETITION IN ARTISTIC CREATION
Thesis
Explained through psychoanalytical theories about childhood, repression and the role of hidden memories, and biographical interpretations of the childhoods of selected artists and their respective artistic practice (Yayoi Kusama, Henry Moore and Pablo Picasso).
From my fascination toward artists who share a sort of obsession within their work and to my own confusion and intrigue as to why I feel compelled to paint in a specific and repetitive way, I want to delve into the prospect of the role of childhood within this compulsion. I wonder if creative intention in artworks can be overshadowed by subconscious motivation creeping up from way-back-when, expressing and possibly revealing long lost memories or events that have stayed dormant in our subconscious that eventually emerge as a symbol in our creations.