Fine Art Photography
"Trauma," 2024
AI generated image for the group exhibition: "Tantalus at Tartara" at Tobacco Factory in Athens, Greece
10-13/10/2024
Giclée print on photographic paper (55 x 80 cm)
Curator: Artemis Potamianou
Never did I imagine that the myth of Tantalus would resonate so deeply with me... My artistic contribution to this project ended up becoming a central topic of discussion in my individual therapy. The awareness of an internal struggle emerged, one that continues to affect my life to this day.
It is not clear to me how I began to create the piece you see before you, which I named "Trauma". The myth of Tantalus fascinated me since childhood, more than those of Sisyphus, Ixion, or the Danaids. Why? Perhaps, even back then, I saw something of myself in it.
Walking along my personal psychotherapeutic path, I now realize the difficulty of recognizing my personal needs through my senses and emotions, let alone expressing and fulfilling them. This realization brings with it personal pain. Think about it for a moment: what is more difficult and painful? To know your needs and not fulfill them, or to not even be able to perceive them, while they are right there in front of you, trying to get your attention, but you, I, we do not see them?
What prevents me from recognizing my needs? What numbs me so deeply that I cannot perceive my emotions? Usually, it is one or more "traumas" that, for reasons of self-protection, we suppress and bury in a dark basement of our soul, trying to forget them. But do they truly fade away? I fear not. Even when they are imprisoned in the deepest basements of our personal Hades, the traumas continue to affect our lives in subtle ways — they influence our worldview, our choices, our relationships with others, and with ourselves.
According to Gestalt psychotherapy theory regarding intrapsychic trauma, contact with repressed emotions can be deeply therapeutic. It suggests that trauma, as a frozen experience of the past, retains its dynamic in the present, preventing us from living authentically. In the therapeutic process, the first step is awareness — to be able to see and accept what is there, no matter how painful it is. This awareness brings not only pain but also the possibility of change. When we come into contact with our traumas, when we give space to our pain and allow our sensations and emotions to surface, we can begin to rebuild our relationship with ourselves.
A quote from Carl Jung has remained deeply engraved in my memory: "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate." This phrase summarizes the importance of the therapeutic process: to illuminate those parts of ourselves that remain in the dark, so that we do not let trauma determine the course of our lives.
"Trauma," is an attempt to come into contact with this darkness and bring it to light. It is an invitation, both for myself and for you, to recognize those parts we avoid, to embrace our pain, and to find a new way of being, free from the chains that bind us like Tantalus.
Dimosthenis Gallis