The Self-Portrait Experience

Art and creative work is not only about finding great ideas. Our best ideas spring from our deepest needs, from within. A powerful creative process can be triggered unconsciously, through emotional expression in a self-portrait. We access a limit situation, we are vulnerable and therefore open to the creative inner fire… A ‘perfect’ artwork is produced without our control or awareness, because in the self-portrait we are, at the same time, author, subject and spectator, and the dynamics between the three roles stimulate our unconscious to speak with the language of art.

Working on the in-depth perception of the works produced allows us to study how our images can be perceived by others and to discover that our perception constantly changes in time. The artworks are surrogates of the human being: they possess an amazing plasticity and multiplicity of possible meanings, a powerful connection with time and a particular harmony of visual elements.

On the first day of the self-portrait workshop, alone in a professional photo studio set up by Nuñez at filmArche, each participant will take collaborative self-portraits, reacting to the artist’s instructions, and later work on the ever-changing perception and choice of the images produced with the help of our methodology of perception. The group will work on the perception of given images and will take new photographs with their camera or phone. On the second day, participants will work in small groups on their perception and storytelling of others’ images and later share their views with the whole group.

The workshop will be held in English.

Together with Cristina we will learn:

• Methodology of perception – how to choose the best image
• Characteristics of an art work
• Transforming an experience into photography
• Stimulate creative process by means of emotional expression

Participants should:

• bring camera or smartphone, laptop, usb stick
• on the 2nd day only: bring pre-selected family picture that show clearly faces. The older, the better.
• watch Nuñez’s two videos:

Someone to Love, her autobiography: https://vimeo.com/47436146
Higher Self, about the method and its philosophy: https://vimeo.com/47436147

For more information and to register, please contact Pi Altendorfer at to.pi@posteo.de

Born in 1962, Cristina Nuñez is a self-taught artist, specialized in autobiographical art, whose work has been published, multi-awarded and exhibited internationally in venues such as the Mois de la Photo di Montreal, Casino of Luxemburg, MUSAC, MUFOCO, etc., and is part of private and public collections. Nuñez is also a facilitator of transformative self-portrait with The Self-Portrait Experience, a method she created in 2005 from her own personal experience, and which she teaches in her workshops around the globe in art schools, universities, museums, prisons, mental health centres, rehab centres and companies as an instrument for individual and social transformation, and social activism. Nuñez is currently completing her PhD in photography on her practice and methodology at the School of Art, University of Derby, UK. She lives and works in Morbio Inferiore (Switzerland).

To find out more about Cristina Nuñez and The Self-Portait Experience, please visit the websites:
https://cristinanunez.com/
http://selfportrait-experience.com/

Date: 2-3.06.2018
Time: 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM both days
Place: filmArche, Lahnstraße 25, Berlin
Room: S1 & Foyer
Language: English