Art as a Creative Response to any Human Problem

“Art therapy is an awareness-raising tool, conceiving the student as a unique being who transmutes his learning into artistic manifestations.”

Telling stories and teaching with art are techniques that trigger creativity in all disciplines. Why couldn’t anyone make their life a work of art? Regina Freyman and Mónica Ogaz teach us a concept called art therapy in our Webinar to address this question. They see art therapy as an awareness-raising tool, conceiving the student as a unique being who transmutes his learning into artistic manifestations.

When we think that art is only for geniuses, we push students away from their artistic manifestations. We forget that we as human beings create, just like we breathe, talk, or walk. This traditional mentality ignoring our artistic expression mutilates something fundamental inside us: we can use art as a creative response to any human problem. We are not all geniuses, but we are all artists.

“I have seen that in our society, art has become something that pertains to objects and not life or individuals.” – Michel Foucault

Creativity helps us seek new solutions, take risks, and see things from different perspectives; therefore, art therapy is a valuable tool. It motivates people with different abilities to express things beyond words and expose their most legitimate feelings and thoughts.

Gestalt Art Therapy is a humanist therapy based on the idea that, in our present moment, we have all that we are, and upon seeing all that we are, we can integrate our reasons and emotions into our being. Within us, there are many characters, and we must give each a voice to know them.

Below, I share two activities that Regina and Mónica taught us in the Webinar that can be applied in class and everyday life. For more details, please consult the Webinar, which is available at all times.

• “Knots” Exercise by Monica Ogaz

Use a blank sheet and pencil. Think about your life and the different stages you are experiencing. Trace or draw a “knot” thinking about the different areas of life. How is your health? What are your family relationships like? How do you feel in your working life? How is your relationship with others? With your dreams? Any aspect that worries you, what you are going through, and causes you frustration, pain (a “knot”) later, put it on the paper. When you have finished drawing the knots’ collection, try to find how you can relate to it. Start analyzing. What interpretation do you give the drawing? What can you make out of it? For example, perhaps you see a dancing body, a chain, an animal, a flower, or a heart. What does it mean to you, how do you interpret it? Symbols change as we do. Each person’s interpretation can mean something different, like finding more time for yourself, playing with your kids, writing, or singing. The idea is to discover something different in our knots. We can think about what we can do with what we have. What can we do to change our reality or accept it? This exercise that we did with Monica Ogaz was fascinating and helped us a lot. I suggest you review the Webinar video, so you do not miss any detail of this fascinating talk.

 “Inside ourselves, we are always in the process of becoming something. How do we achieve it? It depends on the creative forces we have.”

 How can we find the creative resources that make us feel and live better? Gestalt Art Therapy puts us in touch with our responsibilities and reminds us that the people inside us have answers. When we know what we feel, we can decide what to do with that feeling and put it into action.

• Anthropology of the Body by Regina Freyman

Tec de Monterrey students carried out an analysis of the body from an ideological and scientific perspective. With a partner or family member’s help, the students mapped their entire body’s contour on a canvas or cardboard. They then answered questions that they expressed in a painting with a symbol or sign. Where does feminism hurt you? Where does it hurt you to be confined today and not able to go out? The students went about explaining what they were feeling and expressed it artistically. The exercise has several stages and allows various reflections, such as the privileges or deficiencies with which we are born. This map of the body that the students made is a testimony to what they are living. Human beings are collectors of stories, such as when we buy a souvenir or remembrance of a moment to make it stay fresh in our memory. “All artistic manifestations are wonderful! What would we do without them in the pandemic confinement?” Regina says in the Webinar. I invite you to watch the webinar video, so you do not miss any detail of this exercise. 

“Art is the physical tracing of the feeling of being alive. Why not make art a part of the class?.”

Our job as teachers is to help students remember that they have thousands of resources. Implementing these techniques in school means giving them more instruments that make those experiences tangible, using a different language, thus, enabling them to integrate the concepts studied.

In this Webinar, Mónica y Regina taught us that art is for everyone and can be applied to everything. In our daily lives and classes, art therapy is a creative way to generate new ideas, see things from another perspective, connect with ourselves, leave our comfort zones, lose our fears and take risks, and, above all, learn something new. If you want to know more about this, check out the full Webinar on the Observatory of Educational Innovation Facebook or YouTube pages.

Mónica Ogaz studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. She felt that something was missing in between brushstrokes, so she studied Gestalt Art Therapy and Psychotherapy in Bolognese. She is currently the Academic Director of the Accademia D’Arte AD’A in Florence.

Regina Freyman is addicted to stories told with words, the body, images, and all media. She studied literature at UNAM, specialized in short stories at IBERO, and has been with Tecnologico de Monterrey for 15 years.

Both women know that every educational experience must have an artistic dimension to be unforgettable.

If your native language is not Spanish, you can inst
antly enable translated subtitles on YouTube during the Webinar covered in this article. To activate this option, select the Subtitles option on YouTube (Spanish subtitles will appear), then select Settings ->Subtitles -> Translate automatically, and next, the language you prefer.

Translation by Daniel Wetta.

Rubí Román – (rubi.roman@tec.mx) Editor of Edu bits articles and Webinars "Learnings that inspire"

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