Fixed earth: sensitivity, grounding, sensuality

I’m working a project in the tradition of the künstlerroman, or the artist’s novel.

I have been inspired by books and films in this vein, and I collected some of my inspirations in a recent post.

I’ve been thinking, too, about the qualities that are necessary for being an artist, and I keep returning to sensitivity.

Sensitivity is needed to feel into the frequencies that initiate a project.

Sensitivity allows an artist to reject what isn’t working and move towards what is.

Sensitivity is required to process, share, or perform an artwork.

Sensitivity is a resource to protect at all costs.

I have been inspired by three artists who work with sensitivity at different stages of their process: model and photographer Yasmin El Yassini, visual artist and photographer Yushi Li, and musician Kali Malone.

It was Kali Malone’s core artistic principle, ‘cherish sensitivity’, that helped me to think about sensitivity as one of my most precious resources.

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Yasmin El Yassini

Trees… are the veins to heaven.

I was struck by the way that model, artist, and photographer, Yasmin El Yassini, uses her downtime between campaigns to recalibrate her sensitivity by connecting with her own self-image, and with the natural environment.

In the image above, you can see the softness, and tenderness, of her self portrait. She finds it ‘very helpful and therapeutic to regain the power over myself, after being always photographed.’

In the main image for this post, you can see her photograph of a cluster of trees. She says that:

I love trees – with leaves, or bare, they are the veins to heaven. I feel very inspired and reconnected with life by deeply being in nature. It’s so nourishing to see all sorts of forms and shapes.

I found it illuminating to see how she replenishes her sensitivity, when her work requires her to tune in, so exquisitely, to the visions of others.

You can find more of her work on her Instagram (some images may be NSFW).

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Yushi Li

The one doing the dreaming and desiring.

Visual artist and photographer, Yushi Li, is influenced by eroticism, fantasy, psychoanalysis, and art history. Her sensitivity is nourished by being able to recreate her own fantasies where ‘the female figure is no longer the object of someone else’s dream or desire, but the one who is doing the dreaming and desiring.’

Though her most famous photographs are of her posing clothed with naked men, one of the most arresting of her images is of an empty room, vacated by her artistic subjects. You can see the pink sofa and piles of rose petals; a stage set for her romantic compositions. Of this image, reproduced above, she says that:

It reveals the impossibility of sustaining the fantasy… I think there’s frustration but also pleasure in this never-ending process of longing. So much of the fantasy is that it’s suspended just out of reach.

Yushi Li’s art is romantic, fantastic, and lush. She gently works through questions of gender and sexuality in her recreations of familiar artistic tropes. Softness and sensitivity are underwritten by a darker shadow; the dream of ‘wanting to be that demon’, from the Fuseli painting.

But it is her attunement to vulnerability, sensuality, and desire that makes these photographs so remarkable.

You can see more of Yushi Li’s work on her website (some images are NSFW).

🜁🜃🜂🜄

Kali Malone

Cherish sensitivity.

Kali Malone is a musician whose work I listen to frequently when writing. It isn’t only her meditative drones that help me to concentrate, but a sense of kinship with her fundamental approach to artistry.

Her work is improvisatory but also based on a very specific pattern that she has designed. She describes the sensitivity that she requires to make her work:

While playing these pieces I need to be observant but not emotionally affected or swept away in a deep listening state… If I have the discipline to follow the structure, there’s potential for incredible moments to happen that I couldn't have predicted, but it all depends if I am open to perceiving those moments when they occur.

I try to channel this quality as I write by listening to drone or ambient music, field recordings, or other meditative sounds.

If you would like to try to do the same, you can listen to one of Kali Malone’s pieces, Living Torch, on Bandcamp.

Sensitivity and art

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