Burn (it) Out - Performance/Photography Project

This project starts from my own experience as a woman that went through exhaustion and emotional burnout, while being a parent, immigrant and somehow trying to figure out how to be an artist in Sweden. It also includes the experiences of other women that went through similar situations, that I have collected through research and discussions. 

The full body of work is a combination of paintings on canvas, performance photography work and installations. 

I  chose to work with this subject to give an insight about what it feels. A lot of people can relate and feel inspired to tell their own story then. Open up to something still kept too quiet in our society. 

I also put the light on the “emotional” burnout. The burn out from work is more known but still too little is shared or acknowledged about emotional burnout. It means for me when you don’t know your limits and put your heart, mind and body too much in what is expected of you (or what you except for yourself ) in any aspect of your life. Career or family, relationships or engagements in the world etc. Any situation that you mean to do good but that can never be to the height of your perfection goals.

You try to manage it all and don’t hear those tiny little voices slowly destroying your confidence with frustration of not reaching the goals you’ve set and managing it all. 

Being happy, a present parent, having a successful career, a meaningful lifestyle, being healthy or whatever you are trying 

to do. You don’t feel your body telling you it can’t anymore because you haven’t learned to listen to it. And one day the pressure you give yourself breaks you down. Often the physical signs are frightening and you will learn within a short time

what anxiety means. You might feel alone, scared, misunderstood, helpless, hopeless, depressed.


I won’t explain here what it all means because I want the artworks to talk for themselves. But what I know is that hopefully you get better with time and help and learn how to care for yourself in a different way. Like a bone fracture, your mind and nervous system will heal and recover, if you don’t jump on it directly again. But you will never be the same, and this experience and the “new you” can inspire others” to do their own journey.

 

 

 

The photographic work is co-created with the artist-photographer Anna Rylander. As a woman that also was through a burn out herself we can relate our experiences and we found each other to do this work together. While playing with the scenes I imagined and representing them with photography, we could add another dimension to the installations and paintings. The photographs were the missing link of this project:  sharing our common experience has made it a strength and a creative impulse in our collaboration work. I perform my ideas and play with the accessories and feelings, Anna shoots. Then we grab what is telling something interesting visually about the subject.

Each piece of work is showing/telling the story of my experience or someone else´s about emotional burnout. While working on this project, alone or with Anna, more sides of the subjects appear and become new aspects to explore through an artwork production. 

Therefore the art pieces created around Burn (it) Out is not exhaustive but evolutive with time, according to what is rising out from the actual creative process. To be continued, shown and discussed. 

The collaboration I engaged with Anna is as important as the work in itself. By doing so we explore together what is our unique experience of the burn out and how to put in service our creative process to our healing.

Fannie

Working within the BurnItOutproject is a favour in so many ways. By expressing through art we have taken ownership of our own stories. This happened, happens. This is real. The rewards are in the findings,  the connections discovered during our many talks during breaks. We repeatedly found ourselves sharing perception even though our experiences differ in time and locations. The BurnItOutproject brough a friend, a cure and creativity all let out. Thank You. Continue.

Anna

 

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