Quarantined Creatives Make Underwater Art Campaign To Process Their Painful Covid-19 Pandemic Experiences

As an underwater performance artist, after having to quarantine solo for 3 months due to COVID, I recently came together with a group of quarantined creatives in Los Angeles to create an underwater art campaign that would help us process our painful COVID-19 pandemic experiences.

My imagery series, ‘Sani/Nation,’ is an evocative journey through my pwn personal experience with the COVID pandemic and my struggle to find a better way to process and manage what I recognize as shared communal grief.

The series’ images speak both to the pain of physical distancing as well as what we continue to hold onto and hope for: shared space, support, togetherness, connection and loving touch.

The goal of the underwater imagery series called ‘Sani/Nation’ is to catalyze the full processing and integration of our painful emotions and experience associated with the COVID pandemic like isolation and disconnection and feeling lost, even trapped.

To deny the feelings of loss and grief in our lives, and to deny validating them, risks turning pain into long-term suffering.

If we avoid the pain signaling our distress – anxiety, depression, panic, sadness – it will fester within, lodge in our nervous systems and left unresolved may even be passed down as inherited trauma to the next generation.

This was really my motivation for conceptualizing, directing and performing in the set and prop-intensive photos of ‘Sani/Nation’ because I believes art can serve as a powerful permissive force to help people feel, process, share, discuss and resolve.

// Full series, video narrative and story at http://theunderwaterwoman.com/sani-nation. //

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CREDITS:

Concept Art Director & Performer @theunderwaterwoman

Photographer: Justin Lutsky @jlutskyphoto

Dance & Underwater Model: @sammyjanegray

Production Assistant & Safety: @ofsarahtan

Production Assistant & Safety: @lazarus_eyes

BTS Videographer 1: @hvbsurfcity

BTS Videographer 2: @Ryan.a.Stuart

Support Crew: @Daein.kang & Emily Tan

More info: theunderwaterwoman.com