using art as a mediator for intimacy
What is it about?
An art-based research study that explored whether art and art-making could be considered mediators for intimacy within personal expression. Certain qualities of intimacy were identified within art and art-making: an urge to move closer, embracing small details, layering, safety, transformation, borders and empty spaces, restrictions by limiting media and tension. Art as a mediator was found to provide an intermediate space and a transcendental realm and to serve as a vehicle of expression that could bridge between the physical and the imagined, integrate inner qualities, support differentiation, encourage witnessing and reconcile ambiguity and conflict.
Why is it important?
Despite the common perception that intimacy is an interpersonal phenomenon, the study demonstrated how art-making provides the space and the prerequisites for intimacy to emerge, within an intra-personal search of intimacy. It demonstrates an art-based research the focuses on intimacy as an intra-personal phenomenon.