Figure 2. Koh Zong Qi, Untitled response art, 2025, watercolour, oil pastels, marker and thread on paper, 105 × 148mm.

A nebulous glow

like dark clouds before rain,

but in shades of technicolor,

forms of electrical thunder,

of something within me

(and beyond me)

that is about to be.

Like organelles in a cell

minute within my body,

or faraway milky ways

small within space.

Bubbling! Fizzing! Erupting! 

In effervescent hues,

all at once, collectively.

We had begun our ideation process almost a year ago as part of our final research module within the course. I recall that we were all nervous, tired, uninspired, and much like dandelion clocks, our endless ideas were blown into the wind but it seemed like not very many of them had landed. Fast-forward ten months later, and seeing our artworks, tangible and real, placed within the school’s galleries in preparation for our graduation exhibition felt surreal to me. Walking through the gallery a final time before our opening day and seeing everyone’s artworks present in the space, I recall how my initial apprehension slowly transformed into a sense of awe, pride, and joy, all bubbling within me at once.

I was moved to create in response (Figure 2), and through this introspection it became clear to me that art-making is a practice that inherently propels those who engage in it into a state of collective effervescence – a state of shared emotional resonance within a collective (Durkheim, 1912/1995). I do not know when this happened, but what started out as a requirement for us all to exhibit our individual artworks as part of the course had quietly turned into a shared collective desire to tell the world our stories, not only as individuals but as a group. In sharing our art-making process, we also shared our emotional states. We held for one another our fears and worries, joy and excitement. We angered together, and also celebrated together. We poured ourselves not only into our own works, but also extended ourselves into one another’s. We shared time and space beyond what was needed, and came together to witness our works slowly take form. In that process, we continuously and mutually reciprocated the amplification of our feeling states – a nebulous, colourful glow that was constantly bubbling, fizzing, erupting within and beyond each of us.

What Durkheim (1912/1995) famously coined as “collective effervescence” seems to be precious now as we become increasingly alienated from ourselves, from one another, and from the natural world. To me, art-making then becomes even more important because it reaches into all that modern society denies us. The very act of creating demands an individual’s undivided attention and presence. In that process, we thus dig deep within and connect back to ourselves. In making art together (and in this case, working towards a shared goal), we connect with one another in far-reaching, inexplicable ways. Truly, while the root ideas for our artworks were born from our individual selves, an emotional resonance was evident in the final artworks created. Organic materials, shared symbols of cocoons and birds, common themes contemplating the Self – these were but a few observable synchronies in the ideas explored and materials used. There was also a coherence in the display within the galleries that we did not explicitly plan for.

On one of the days at the gallery, a visitor asked me to pick and elaborate on a favourite artwork out of the 29. I froze, feeling myself pause for longer than a moment in my inhale while words tangled at the tip of my tongue. This seemingly straightforward request felt paradoxical to me – how does one single out something that was inherently built on the foundation of the collective? An intertwine of the collective and individual happens within us (Jung, 1959/2014), and so within and between the artworks we create as well. I know this to be true because I had felt it deep within me when I created my own artwork. The hands belonging to my body had made it, but my very being exists inseparably within phenomena happening around me. So to pick a favourite was like being asked to choose a favourite flower from a tree, or a favourite tree from a forest. To choose would require a narrowing of my viewpoint, to take on what felt like a reductionist perspective. I explained that I was unable to choose, because each artwork held unique stories of its own. Who am I to prefer one story over another?

What distinguished this exhibition was then perhaps its delicate, authentic nature, where each artwork had blossomed from stories sprouting from the human experience. I could not critique the artworks as if they were unthinking, unfeeling products, but instead found myself acknowledging each one’s multifaceted, interconnected nature. They all seemed to bear lives of their own, which sparked my own curiosities into what they (and so, the artists) held. The house built on a hill, the barren tree emerging from concrete, the paper-made cocoon, the flower rooted on threads – each one beckoned me to lean in and let my sensing body listen to what they had to offer.

The feeling of collective effervescence is meant to lead to personal transformation (Durkheim, 1912/1995), and similarly, the experience of this exhibition had me pondering over how my own identity has shifted. As far as societal definitions are concerned, I was never formally ‘trained’ in the arts. While movement and creating were something that I already had engaged in prior to the art therapy course, I had never dared to identify myself as an artist. Yet now, I was part of an exhibition with my own artwork on display. As I stand, here and now, on the threshold between there, then, and what is to be, I am thinking that perhaps all I am is a human being who constantly desires to create something, for myself and for the people around me. Experiencing these two years as an art therapist trainee and now culminating in this exhibition with my cohort, I have learned that the artist is innate in all of us. Much like stars in space and cells in our bodies, this artist self exists naturally within, demanding to be seen and tended to. This then is perhaps what art-making in art therapy is about – to realise the artist in the individuals we meet, and to build and share creative, hopeful, effervescent worlds beyond the mundane in everyday life. It is with this renewed knowing that I encourage all art therapists to proudly and bravely embrace their own artist within.

Natalie Tee Yen Sean

The exhibition title There & Then, Here & Now denotes a passage of time. In fact, the works created for this show all contain layers of time as a medium. For some, time is an organic ingredient that allows the artwork to develop, such as mould and paper. For some, time is ladened in the making of it as the artists have left their unique imprints of time within the artwork. For some, time is reflected in the narratives embodied within the artwork, whether personal or as part of a cultural collective.

Our graduation exhibition then gained a symbolic presence as a museum of time, one that artistically narrated personal history, social history, and cultural history. As my understanding and appreciation of the richness behind each artwork within the exhibition grew, I gradually realised that in my eagerness to become and find my practice, I had forgotten that time is a key component for professional identity formation as an art therapist. Despite knowing how powerful offering time is for enabling the art-making process to unfold and gently hold our clients’ being, have I perhaps neglected to offer myself the same grace to allow time to speak to my professional identity and reach internal equilibrium?

In a pressing global landscape where bureaucratic decisions unfortunately often challenge the legitimacy of our work, I find that the already limited timeframe given to us for process-orientated work is further encroached upon in the name of quantifiable outcomes and organisational efficiency. And many times I have found myself floundering in the rapid currents of time, feeling restless in my urge to prove my value as an art therapist in places where knowledge about our profession remains vague. But with each new round of introductions I made about the artworks and stories behind them, I found myself learning more intimately about the lived experiences contained within each piece, and the figments of the memories shared by us as friends and comrades during the two-year course shone even brighter. Such precious insights would not have been possible without the sedimentation of time. It is beautiful in this sense, where time not only serves as a metaphorical container carrying the imprints of the different instances of self that evolved in our journey as growing art therapists (Coles, 2014), but also enables the artwork to grow in meaning as different people interact and place their embodied presence within it (van Laar, 2020).

During the exhibition, I coincidentally encountered a fellow music therapy trainee at my placement site, whom I have always wanted to meet but never had a chance to. We happened to have worked with the same client within the multidisciplinary healthcare team, and I confessed that reading the music therapy trainee’s clinical documentation made me feel professionally inferior when I noticed remarkable breakthroughs via musical modalities rather than art-making. This case subsequently planted many doubts about my professional identity as an art therapist as I contended with what my therapeutic role served when art-making was not present. So imagine my surprise when the music therapy trainee eagerly expressed her gratitude as soon as we met. She said that the therapeutic moments of meeting she shared with the client would not have been possible if it was not for my clinical observations and progress. When I shared my doubts and regrets on my role in the client’s care as an art therapist, the music therapy trainee said that perhaps the meaning of this experience on a clinical level was to serve as a foundation for others like her, and it was not futile.

A few months prior when I submitted my artwork write-up for the exhibition, I wrote that “the meaning of all that came past will be made known, in the flow of time” – a final message of hope I desired my artwork to convey. My conversation with the music therapy trainee thus became a timely closure on two fronts: as an epilogue to my artwork In Time (Figure 3), and also as a personal emotional resolution to my time as an art therapist trainee.

By allowing time to speak for itself, so will new meanings be discovered and arise from past narratives. The exhibition space itself relayed such wisdom as well. The proximity of C.H Lim’s artwork Witness (pictured behind my artwork in Figure 3) to mine, led to a delightful image when its shadow kissed my installation’s shadow on the wall during sunset (Figure 4). The passage of time carried by the setting sun had magically joined the residues of our artworks into another creation, much like how our life narratives crossed so wonderfully with one another at the right juncture in time. When we submit our trust to the flow of time by remaining present and attentive to the here and now, so will beautiful instances like this come to us in its destined moment.

Within the physical and metaphorical space created by this exhibition, where present moments and lived experiences interposed, time exceeded linearity as I heard different sides to my own story, and how it crossed with the path of others. As I savoured these wonderful intersections between our narratives and between each artwork, I remembered once more that perhaps the first step to growth as an art therapist is to learn to simply be. Believe that the life within art-making will take us to where we need to be as practitioners when we attune to the creative flow within ourselves. As we remain present in the here and now not just within therapeutic encounters but also beyond in general life, so will we reach where we are supposed to be in time – as budding art therapists, and as unique selves in the interwoven tapestry of life.