I have now finished my best stay so far. It is difficult to fully find words for what it has given in terms of insight, learning and meetings with people who have inspired me for life.
I had a bit of a detour from Santiago when I arrived in the wrong part of the desert in Chile – there's Atacama and there's San Pedro de Atacama when looking for flight destinations. Even though I'm well-travelled, I guess I'm still from a very small country! I finally landed in the right place and met the artists I've shared a home with for the last magical three weeks.
My time in Santiago, despite being a festive time with experiences and friends, has offered a lot of introspection and inner process. I have encountered old sides of myself and my beliefs that needed to be dealt with and generally patterns that I needed to break away from. It has been a hard but important inner process that was taken to new heights during my stay.
During the travels in the beautiful places in the desert, I noticed a very special energy. Or rather, more energies that helped me lift the processes I was already doing. For the first few days I found an artistic expression in it, seeing the many levels up towards the mountains and the warped horizons I don't normally associate with desert landscapes. The Atacama is an ancient seabed that makes nature and its resources endlessly fascinating. But what fascinated me the most was the local people's harmony with nature and the balance between the masculine and feminine energy. It was as if they were also in me as I broke away from old beliefs. And there is no more beautiful place to heal yourself than right there.
We artists each found our tools from the site as well as our medium to work with during the entire stay. In addition to trips out into nature, the days were spent in the garden for contemplation, around our large dining table or the fire - and when the rain came, we stayed inside our shared house with hot tea and conversation. The magic was only lifted by sharing the experience with each other.
I was particularly fascinated by the local legend of Quimal, from which I created my artwork. The process was particularly interesting when I experienced a sudden anger settling in my body. Not over a specific thing, but in connection with my own insight and the confrontations in the wild nature, there were suddenly many elements, beliefs, patterns and even a lot of external factors around the imbalance in the masculine/feminine that became completely clear to me and kicked up an anger that needed to be felt and processed. Like so much, it was mostly about the untruths that I have unfilteredly taken in during my life, and which now had to be lifted. I submitted to the experience and took my time until the time and energy called to let it go completely. That particular experience was very special – exhilarating and overwhelming at the same time, but most of all so enormously liberating that I didn't even understand that it was possible to feel so free and true. I have taken that back with me with such great joy.
Our stay culminated in an exhibition in San Pedro in a symphony of all our works in the finest premises in the middle of the city. It was so wonderful to see and experience through art what each of us had gone through during those weeks. Surreal too, because even though I'm trying to write this and have been journaling almost daily, there are no words for the experience. It had to be felt and can probably only be understood between us. It was almost like coming back from Hogwarts, as one of the others said when we landed in Santiago – I couldn't have said it better myself, so I will end this post with deep gratitude and beautiful memories of my desert expedition.
Lots of love,
Lot
