National Parks of Emotion Art Lab
How has the experience of living through a global pandemic made you feel? How has it affected your life, your work, your relationships, and your state of mind? The National Parks of Emotion is a participatory multidisciplinary art project reflecting on our emotional experiences of the pandemic since it began— join me in building it!
Naming and imagining an emotion as a national park—whether it’s the National Park of Uncertainty, Rage, or Gratitude—helps give perspective on the huge variety of emotions so many of us are having right now, and reminds us that no matter how strong a feeling is, we’re just passing through.
The National Parks of Emotion Art Lab is an interactive workshop that will give an overview of the project and share how to participate if you choose. I’ll lead you through the guided meditation that inspired it, teach you how to share your stories, and create abstract landscape photos of the national parks of emotion you've been visiting. Meet and connect with others through discussions, and get support and encouragement in the creative process.
Together we’re mapping how it has felt to live through this pandemic, creating a National Parks of Emotion system that will culminate in a digital archive and final interactive event.
Everyone is welcome, including teens and kids with adult supervision. You don’t need to consider yourself a writer or artist to help build the National Parks of Emotions, you just have to be open and willing to play, take chances, and collaborate.
If you want to participate in the project, but can’t attend this Art Lab, I still encourage you to learn about the project and submit your story.
Project Partners:
Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling, Concordia University
Artist Bio:
Mindy Stricke is a photographer and participatory artist whose collaborative practice blends photography, documentary audio, writing, collage, sculpture, and performance. She uses metaphors of geography and place to map emotions and life passages, about topics such as new motherhood, childhood play, grief, and sexuality. Working with the public, she transforms the familiar into something new, helping to connect people to themselves and others in the process.
Mindy’s work has been awarded grants and fellowships from the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts among others. Her photographs and installations have been exhibited throughout North America, and featured in CBC Arts, The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, Japan’s Voce Magazine, Toronto Star, Modern Loss, What’s Your Grief, and the Smithsonian Institute Photography Initiative’s book and exhibit, Click! Photography Changes Everything. She is an affiliated researcher at the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University. Originally from New York, she now makes her home in Montréal.
