Charmolypi at PAUSE 202X

PAUSE 
Featuring Nawwar Shukriah Ali | Sarah Ameera | Shiela Samsuri

CHARMOLYPI  (n.) χαρμολύπη
By Nawwar Shukriah Ali

My art is “joy-making sorrow”.

Part 1

When the world started slowing down, as a visual maker & producer, I found myself not having as many jobs to work on. The endless and hectic work schedule that was my  distraction came to a stop, and I was left with myself.

I set a routine of waking up, cooking, dancing, reading books and watching TV. A routined laziness for which I now had an excuse for.

In isolation, the maker in me occupied time by learning how to play the keyboard; music, often a quick-access escape door from general mundanity. That, and constant scrolling of internet memes. 

When I eventually put down my phone, the nights were noisy. I listened to thoughts in my head through loudspeakers with a background hum of loneliness. 

Staring at shadows playing the walls, I could not help but think that the world was playing a prank on me, and that the world was moving on as usual. I had been earmarked to be out of life. 

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Part 2

> Notes from a Devil’s Workshop 1.
 
Aloneness.
A lone ness. 
None sales.
Sane no ones (l) 

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Part 3

In the final month of lockdown (May 2021), I signed up for ‘Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing’ (EMDR) psychotherapy treatment to dig into my memories (and past) to alleviate the current distresses faced.

We talked about my mom passing on when I was 17 years. About self-issues of attachment versus abandonment; and the people who have moved in and out of my life. About my understanding of commitments, and the reading/sending of relationship signals. I let people in, who become friends, who overstep boundaries… Lessons of screening and valuing the people who surround you; in search of genuine relationships. 

I feel like a healing child, an offspring from generations of trauma.

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Part 4

“Go to your safe space everytime you feel threatened or sad”, said the therapist.

I’m a bubble, with other bubbles.
We greet the sandy beach. We crash onto her, all of us from every direction. 
The clouds watch from above, hueing us.

Within the bubble it is quiet. 
I sleep, and I wake up to be who I want to be. 
I create with energy from within the bubble.  

I want to carry a bubble tattoo on my wrist, a reminder of my safe space.

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“So imagine yourself as a child, what would you want your mother to do for you when she
was around? If you could be that mother, what would you say to that young child?”,  asked my
therapist.

My mother, she was beautiful and empathetic. She was a private person, and chose to keep herself in. She held a strong demeanor, and numbed off the world.

She was 8 months pregnant with me when my father passed on. 

...I would say, ‘It’s okay, this is home and you are safe’. 

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