Through art making, Dutch artist Afra Eisma processes her own personal trauma and creates spaces for visitors to do the same. Vibrantly colored weavings and stuffed sculptures combine with handmade ceramic elements to form new worlds where aliens, insects, and humans gather. Mythological beings and dreamlike places blend with body parts to create safe spaces for the full range of emotional expression. For Eisma, her artistic practice is one of healing through feeling.
For Hush, her exhibition at ICA Central—her first solo exhibition in the United States—Eisma is designing an experience inspired by the healing properties of breath. As Eisma explains, “Breath is a tool in becoming more present; it’s a healing power for our nervous system, a bridge between body and mind. Breath is a bodily function that we have the power to control, or we let it take control of us.”
Eisma will design an immersive, multi-media installation with audience participation in mind. Her participatory, tactile installations will blow, heave, and gasp, reinterpreting the sounds, sensations, and act of breathing. Breath is an indicator of life and can be quite intimate. This exhibition draws attention to breathing as an accessible tool for healing, a hallmark of many wellness practices, it is a proven stress-reducer, resetting the link between body and mind.
