Sharing experience through imagination, storytelling, and sharing experiences is a traditional method of psychotherapy used in Jungian-type analytical psychology, especially in catatymically imaginative psychotherapy. The installation, which we are entering at the exhibition of Tania Nikula and Linda Hauerová entitled About trees, a jellyfish and stomachache, at the first sight evokes the impression of a kind of therapy through the imagination of nature. It deals with a person's frequent desire to disappear in the forest, to observe the stars and to enjoy the blending of reality with imagination. The focal point of the installation is a multi-channel audio track telling a story related to memories of anxiety and fear, linked to the sharing of anxiety of the forest and plants. These are connected by the root system and share nutrients with each other, they exist in symbiosis.
There is a parallel of human relations with relations between plants, it is a kind of primordial desire for eternal fusion, the desire to become part of the network of all roots and to experience a feeling of belonging that never ends. The installation itself can be metaphorically understood as a cave or stomach, symbolizing the spawn of the forest, where stories about its anxieties are processed, about the fear that arises even in a safe environment, in an environment where there is great darkness, specific smell, soil moisture, changing temperature. It can lead to an animal urge to leave the city and blend in with the forest, soil, animals and plants. The author expresses this need through originally literary texts, and the exhibition is a medium for communicating them. For the exhibition, the texts were adapted to the form of a "spoken word", which makes it easier for viewers (actually listeners) to immerse themselves in the world of imagination. The viewers themselves are then the creators of images in their own imagination.
Linda Hauerová is currently studying in the studio of Dominik Lang and Edith Jeřábková, working with the themes of amateur therapy, accepting negative emotions and feelings of inappropriateness and grief. She uses modified traditional art techniques, written word and sound.
Tania Nikulina is currently completing her studies at the UMPRUM Sculpture Studio under the guidance of Dominik Lang and Edith Jeřábková, and during her studies she completed an internship at the Universität für angewandte Kunst in Vienna. She has exhibited independently in the Jelení Gallery in Prague or in the OffFormat Gallery in Brno. Together with Lenka Glisníková, she has realized several performative projects, for example in the Rudolfinum Gallery or the INI space.
