Sweet memories. - image 1 - student project

The story of this drawing is about a girl experiencing, in her early childhood years, depression and suicidal tendencies/thoughts because of her dysfoncitonal family.

Her father assaults her half-brother. She used to be very close to both of theses family members. She is afraid of her father and rejected by her sibling. Her mother didn't play a major role at this period of time since she was emotionaly unavailable.

At school, she was desperately trying to be heard and understood, and at the same time didn't want to be a burden to the others, wich made her speechless about going in depth about her own personal family issues.

Misunderstood, she was constantly drowning in her loneliness and pain. As a result, she found confort at night in her bed while everyone was asleep, contemplating her futur through her star shapped lamp whie listening to music.

The synonyms/metaphors that inspired me the most from this story are underligned in the text below wich explains the link between the drawing and the story istelf.

On the right side of the drawing there is a little girl with bare foot being depicted representing innocence. In her huge bed, there is a walkman with headphones. Near her, on the wall, there is a star shapped lamp. Both of theses two elements depict escapism.

As of the space she stands in, it appears really minimalist compared to the rest. In fact, we can see a disproportion between the room space and the "messy" space, wich represents injustice, lack of equillibrium. The room space is compressed in the corner wich stands for feeling like being a burden, the atmosphere appears under-pressure, heavy. We can barely see her since she stands in loneliness, isolation and powerlessness. She only observes the cinéma going on in front of her eyes since she feels unsafe, afraid and trapped.

For the rest of the drawing, in the corner we can see a Teddy Bear wich either way can be interprated as the childhood, or as the spirit animal the bear representing family, courage and bravory.

In the middle of the drawing there is a huge placenta, as it is the main topic of the story (dysfonctional family), wich has two major meaning. The first one is obviously the concept of the family, the roots and the second one is the mother figure. The cut umbilical cord depicts very well the unsignificant relationship between the mother and the daughter.

The stepping foot represents the father figure, walking away thus the daughter feeling rejected and aspiring distrust. But also, running away from the family debts or should i say some unfinished buisiness linked to the past and previous/older family members, represented by the mail with a stamp written in cyrillic "debts".

The blood under the placenta stands for the violence.

Last but not least, the blank paper right under everything is for silence because there are so many things that could be expressed without any judgement. There are so many things that were left unsaid, communication is crucial in any kind of relationship, it could have avoided so many conflicts and yet it was the most neglected.

PS : Even though the story is a sad one from the past and the drawing might seem brutal, it inspired me deeply.It was challenging in a way that how i was imagining it seemed absurd but once i drew the basics i smiled because i realized that it was a personal creation. I really enjoyed drawing it through your course Idema, thank you <3

Teodora Aleksieva

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