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Episode 15 - Iris Gildea and Sharoni Sibony
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On this episode, Amy and Miriam speak with two of our visual artists from the Fall 2021 issue of The Canadian Journal of Theology, Mental Health and Disability: Iris Gildea and Sharoni Sibony.
The Colours of Forgiveness: Visual Art, Spirituality, Trauma & Mental Health by Iris:
These images were painted as a means of exploring, communicating, coming to terms with, re-imagining and accepting childhood trauma. While recovery from childhood trauma is a difficult and emotionally challenging journey, I have found it is also a journey that is unparalleled in the depths of spirituality that healing and creative expression have manifested for me. My creative practice, like my spirituality, is influenced by a deep reception to interfaith wisdom traditions that guide me toward experiencing and representing what is always an ineffable contact between the human and the divine. I believe strongly that those of us who journey through the more intense spectrums of trauma and the mental health responses that inevitably mark such journeys are also able to access invaluable insights. These are insights to rich experiences of spiritual and human reality that normative culture fails to recognize and/or integrate as an essential part of the human experience.
Living in these margins of spirituality and mental health encounters can be isolating. In my experience, cultural approaches to trauma recovery tend to fail survivors. Yet, art as a means of self-exploration and creative transformation is able to support us as, in my case of surviving childhood sexual abuse, we reclaim the parts of ourselves the cultural norms teach us to silence and repress. That spirituality and art intersect in the on-going recovery from childhood trauma is a beautiful reality to me that I seek to explore creatively. These images are a witnessing to and manifesting of that exploratory process.
My Body's Keeper: Provocations and Possibilities by Sharoni:
I initially made these images for an exhibition in the Virtual Gallery of the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre in downtown Toronto, February 2021, and am so grateful for the opportunity to reach a different audience and embark on a broader conversation through this journal. I welcome correspondence with folks in different religious communities about how you’re navigating similar questions about chronic or episodic illness. Disclosure of invisible long-term illness or disability is a fraught and frightening experience but I hope that sharing these personal reflections will only lead to an ever-increasing understanding of our whole selves in our collective spiritual communities.
Both pieces can be viewed here: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cjtmhd/issue/view/2302
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