Amaka invites you to participate to the 1st International Symposium of Art Therapies “Life and Art as one” within the parallel events of the 5th Biennale of Contemporary Art of the State Museum of Contemporary Art, in Thesaloniki.

During the symposium Amaka will held an exhibition presenting the ‘THIVA 102 KM”, an art therapy workshop held in the women prison of Thiva and will also participate in the conference doing theoretical presentations of the Art Therapy Methodology.

More details to be announced soon.

Read what the curator of the project Elena Tonikidi says about the whole idea;

“ An open procedure that will constantly enriched with your participation. We will examine and acquaint the relationship between art and therapy and the possibility of developing a comprehensive dialogue between these two cognitive fields. A continuous process of discussion, elaboration and reflection on the theme of the Symposium.

Art as an overall picture of the world, as an ode to the myths, archaic or other, art as medicine and self-healing, art as direct democracy and even as a transformative force of energy either humanic, scientific or artistic and art as a natural evolution of addressing the past, art as a beneficial force that leads to reflection because the thinker sees his own actions as experiments, as attempts to discover something, Nietzsche wrote and art as a continuous interpellation, Axelos says that only leads to a constant search of an answer that self reversed.

Tens of thousands years ago, before the word “art” enters in any culture system , there was the human need for creative expression , beyond of what required for the completion of utilitarian duties. What we now call art , the construction of events or objects of contemplation , through the act of imagination, that displayed or performed in special environments, was then just an aspect of everyday life.

Today more than ever, art is a subject for consideration of a wide science range extends from the field of art, in the field of psychology and medicine. The stimulus and the quest of ways from artists and theorists of performances to envision and interpret art as integral force of the realization of the meaning of human life ‘given’ to art psychotherapists, drama therapists, psychodrama, to dance therapists and kinesiology, to music therapists, in writing and in poetry. As to their counterparts so in the art they look for ways to restore some of the essential functions of the production of art.

The formulation of the enlarged concept of art, entered for first time by Joseph Beuys: « whom does not understand anything of sardines, understands nothing of art,” he said, while stressing that even animals are part of the elaboration and that art is here not to WIN a direct knowledge but to formulate a deeper knowledge in response to the lived. What Beuys essentially raised is that Freedom is the ability of human to create new causes. Freedom = self determination = creativity = art = man . And this, he supplement, is not achieved by some but from all together, starting each one of his workplace , the ability of a nurse, a housewife, a villager, one of all of us, to become a creative power and to recognize it as a part of an artistic requirement that we have to carry out. This life it self.

“Old Intersections’ theme of 5th Biennale of Contemporary Art, old intersections of places and years, an internal necessity that is the core of creation and therefore every mental process can be expressed and reflected through the art. The work that becomes a filter, a screen, a tank and so human creativity and its development become a very important therapeutic agent, so as to modify his imagination, his demons, to change or enrich his symbols as the art product is a first symbol.

“From the mind pessimism to the act of optimism” Antonio Gramsci said, whose work is the inspiration for the title of the main exhibition of the Biennale. Lets realize at this Symposium with your participation and the invited experts therapists, the optimism of the will which will lay the foundations of life today, this ability of man given through the “art therapies” to format his concerns, difficulties, fears, so as to lose their ambiguity, to acquire specific form so as to encounter them better. Life and art as one.”