When the lockdown started, and Kerstin invited me to join the group, I was amazed at the simple but life-changing aspect of turning "stagnation into flow" especially when we could not circulate outside the home. The shift towards traveling "inside" one's own body was profound and the idea of traveling via one's own "inner highway" struck me as hugely liberating and expansive.
Previously, in December 2019, my husband had an operation for a brain aneurysm and it was through witnessing that traumatic experience that I also had come to understand the way that arteries connect the entire body – for example, how it was that they went via his femoral artery (in the thigh) to get inside his brain.
The word "Artery" was therefore already on my mind, not least the random but fulfilling way it nestled inside itself the word "art." As soon as I was introduced to Qi Gong, it became very healing for me, as a means to access and attend to all the organs, all the interconnectedness of the parts, all of which is energetic even though it is "unseen." But it also became a form of practice so analogous to painting.
The act of painting is for me as much about the visible, as it is about that which cannot be seen – an image is access to what lies beyond it; a way to be reminded that what we see isn't all there is. The practice of Qi Gong allowed me to connect these disparate parts – organs, ideas, instincts, flow – into a channel... The word "artery" is a channel of communication both inside the body and out. The chance to make an exhibition that functioned like a body – so many parts, held together by flow, became a kind of guiding principle that I could also embody through the forms.
Ideally, just hearing you talk about flow gave me ideas of how to access ideas, instincts, the "non-visual" which then found it's way into the energy to face creating an image...
Whenever you talk through the body, I become aware of practice, meeting my tools, connecting with various functioning intelligence that works on its own terms...
All artwork displayed below is the original work of Allison Katz.
