How hEDS destroyed my career as an artist
Someone might come along and say that this is just a dumping ground for complaints. Well, that is precisely what this is. Many years ago when the internet took off, I got a lot of free ‘lifestyle advice’ in the form of patronising suggestions from self-promoting life coaches about ways in which I could improve my life if I just thought more positively. We’ve all been there, us folks with chronic health conditions, dealing with people who thought they knew why we could never get better. You learn the hard way, that some of us just have a hard life, and that is really just how it is. Wishful thinking doesn’t help. Forcing yourself to make more positive choices doesn’t help. Being cheerful on the outside and smiling at your mirror image doesn’t help. All of those ways in which we are expected to have a magical control of our lives are illusory. All you can do is just do your best, whatever that best is in the moment. Sometimes it’s just not very good because no one is perfect.
I decided I wanted to write down my story, and I’m sorry it’s gruesome and largely negative, but that’s the reality. Life is a gruesome story and for some people, it’s more painful and challenging than it is for others. I don’t really bother with the literary aspects of these accounts because I have a different project that demands my full focus. With these posts, I just want to give potential readers the outlines of some of the challenging experiences I’ve had in recent years, while also looking back to tie the experiences in with events in my past.
I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to be when I grew up. I felt blocked and suffered from emotional dysregulation. I now know things would have been very different, had I not suffered from hEDS (which may have predisposed me to fibromyalgia and all the rest). But of course I was also affected by the dysfunctions in my family. I became obsessed with beauty and wanted to create beautiful environments. After graduation, I enrolled in an English school called The Country House Course. It was a year long diploma course in interior decoration and art history, and at the end of it, we were also offered an A-level in art. I got an A for my A-level and did okay for the other subjects of the diploma as well, but in general, I was exhausted and had a hard time coming up with creative ideas. I had mononucleosis during the first semester and was constantly cold and miserable in those cold English buildings. When I got home in the afternoon, I longed for a hot bath, but the host family had turned the heating off for the day. It really was tough.
When I returned to Finland, I had major back surgery and then managed to secure an internship at a pleasant little interior design studio for six months. The work as a draughts person was difficult for me because I had little stamina for monotonous work. The next summer, I meant to try in at the art history programme at uni, but I missed the date for the entrance exam. It’s hard to believe, really, but I was a bit muddle headed and overwhelmed by all the demands that were put on young people like myself. I then had one week to study for another entrance exam and managed to secure a place at the department of practical philosophy. I studied philosophy for a year and then attended the entrance exams for art history. I was accepted, but also told I could not really get into uni since I was already in! Oops, I had missed the fact that there were interior exams for those who were already students at uni. No matter, I studied art history for a couple of years quite successfully, although I was becoming increasingly depressed and confused about the purpose of my life.
I was good at analysing art work but I started to wonder why I was studying other people’s creativity and whether I had any artistic creativity to speak of myself. I decided to go to study something art related in France, because England was out of the question due to the exorbitant school fees. Regrettably, I didn’t have the nerve to study fine arts. I started out by more or less just pointing at a map of France and deciding to go somewhere in the South to find out if living in the sun would make me happier (it didn’t, and the winter was very cold anyway). I found an art school in Perpignan and for the entrance exams, I took a cheap tourist flight to Nice and from there I travelled by train to Perpignan. It was a torturous eight hour journey. I took the exam, and was accepted on the foundation course in fine arts. The following autumn, I travelled down by interrail, which usually worked out the cheapest means of transport back in the days. I liaised with an American girl and together, we rented a rather boring and sterile studio flat. When she left in the spring term, I found myself a more suitable and atmospheric flat. The toilet was on the balcony and the rather gloomy bedroom became my storage room, but the main room where I slept had French doors and a view of old French style buildings.
That year in Perpignan was pretty tough, and my diaries and letters to my mum are an interesting read. I was always tired and had headaches, neck pain, relentless stomach pain, and poor mental health with an eating disorder. It goes without saying that I was constantly overwhelmed. In the beginning I didn’t speak French very well, of course, since I had only studied it for three years in school. Unsurprisingly, I was slow to pick it up because I wasn’t well (I was very keen on languages but a very slow learner because of the brain fog that plagued me from a young age). I didn’t really like Perpignan very much either, it seemed a bit claustrophobic and unsafe, and there were a lot of stories of robberies in the streets. In fact, my art portfolio got stolen as soon as I forgot it outside a shop, and I had to redo all the work. At night, people closed their window shutters so you never had that sense of being connected with the inhabitants like you do in Northern countries, and I missed the lights from windows very much. When I was en route to Finland over the Christmas period, I longingly looked out through the train windows at the brightly lit Norther European residential areas that passed by. I nevertheless did quite well on all the basic fine arts courses, and prepared to move elsewhere to specialise in a more commercially oriented design practice. I attended two entrance exams, one in Orleans and one in Caen, and was admitted to the latter to study graphic design, which I studied for one year. Computers were in use for this purpose but I found it insanely difficult to fight for the spaces amongst others who were technically advanced and more aggressive, and I was really too tired to focus on the technical aspects of work on the computer in a foreign language on the rare occasion that I did get a space.
After the summer, my mum came down to help me move from Perpignan. I had financed a mini van for this purpose after receiving some inheritance money after my grandmother Gunni. Because of this, I was able to bring a small chest I bought at Secours Catholique which I have to this day. On the way down, we came across a Chateau that served as a B&B and camping ground, and it had recently been bought by some posh French people from central Paris. My mum and I spent a night in the Chateau, and as we got talking, I was asked if I was interested in renting a flat there over the winter. I learnt later on that the owners thought my parents were paying for it, which of course they weren’t. It really wasn’t very cheap (about 2500 Franc at the time compared with 1500 Franc in Perpignan) and my inheritance was quickly disappearing. I also had to have a car, which was not a bad thing per se because I really needed to get into driving. I had received my driver’s license just before leaving for Perpignan, and now my mum was there to help me buy a car and get into driving in France. I did well and learnt the speedy way of driving in France. I even drove in Paris once, which was pretty hellish, not least as the engine stopped in the middle of a busy street, I almost got stuck go round and round the Charles de Gaulle roundabout, and someone also took the opportunity of deflating a tyre as soon as it was parked. As a student who owned a car and could give others a ride, I had both power and clout, and I loved it. I also drove to and fro to Finland in the summers of 1992 and 1993. I parked wherever I liked because I figured no one would issue a ticket to a French car!
In retrospect, I kind of regret having moved and think I would have been better off just staying put and studying fine art. Instead, I ended up living in a Chateau. Now that’s an improvement, you’ll say! Perhaps, but it was also difficult to be quite far away from school and the city, although I sometimes had my French and Nordic friends sleep over for that reason, and we had some fun parties, too, drinking wine and playing the Ouija board.
I got some creative ideas out of my education, but nothing in the way of a real profession. Clearly, I was not well enough for the path I was trying to pursue, as it was both physically and mentally demanding and I simply could not keep up (especially not in a foreign language). After three years, I failed the exams and was told in no uncertain terms that I was not welcome back. The reason was that I had become far too interested in academia (I had become enamoured with research of an academic nature) and had not followed teachers’ suggestions. I’m not sure there were any suggestions as I didn’t find them very helpful, but there you go. I had to admit defeat and return to Finland, and after four years of struggles in a different culture, it was quite the relief.
Some old collages I did just for fun c. 1989-1991:
During my last year in France, I became fascinated with mythology, and especially primordial myths about the Egg as a symbol of the beginning of life, and I did a disproportionate amount of research for an illustration project at school. When I returned to Finland, I decided to try my luck with comparative religion at uni. I was now a ‘transition student’ of a university that was undergoing major structural changes. I was therefore ‘forgiven’ for a lot of courses that would normally not have counted towards a degree. I really found myself at the faculty of comparative religion, but I also studied pretty much whatever I wanted, including a number of languages, i.e. Chinese and German and Russian. I was a very slow reader and could only do the bare essentials every year. I was quite happy, especially when I finally got a secure bedsit right next to the university.
That one summer in 1993 when I visited Finland with my French car, I found something creative within that started to blossom. I had some big thick pieces of paper and black charcoal teamed with a sienna red pen, and I started to make mysterious symbolic art work. I really hit a vein right there and I wish I had been able to keep it going. I was opening up to an inner dimension. The work is technically awkward but there is a lot of mystery there. And then when I returned to Finland, I started to make symbolic artwork with inks I’d learnt to use in France. I was trying things out but I had a tendency to jump from one thing to another and this is not the best thing to do if you want to build a career as an artist. It was clear that I was constantly tethering on the edge of the possible.
I was on a good path between 1994 and 2000 because I was getting attention and was making lots of friends since people were genuinely curious about the person behind the intriguing art. I was also able to sell a lot of my work, and I appeared on radio a few times, not least with an show about interior decoration called ‘Vivi-Mari’s Boudoir”. I was able to finance the expensive veggie food I bought through a food group at uni - I often found that just as I was heading for financial ruin because of a food bill, someone came along and bought a work of art. But I was also depressed about my failing health, lack of romantic relationships, and the struggle to get serious minded galleries to notice me. One day I simply felt I had emptied myself out and had nothing more to say. I also started to have serious problems with the fine motor skills and my sloppy technical mistakes became more and more frequent. In 2003 my claim for a permanent disability pension was finalised. I turned to decoupage for a while, and this inspired me to make collages. But my collages, which used imagery from the collective domain, were never as personal and emotionally potent as the work I did in the 90s when I was a young, tortured soul trying to figure out the reason we are here and have to suffer so much.
It took me another decade before I had another creative impulse and made a collection of weird experimental sound art called Music for Liminal Times. The methods I invented for making ‘recycled’ music without instruments were thrilling. Again, the work is still technically awkward and my husband promised to master it, but then he died. And soon after, I acquired hyperacusis and could never work with sounds again. They can be found on Bandcamp and Soundcloud.
I could have become a photographer, but I could never afford the equipment. And to be honest, I also struggled with the technical side of photography. During my first year at art school when I spent time in the dark room, I almost fell asleep. When it came to the camera settings, I just could not for the life of me get it into my head. And so it wasn’t really until I made a poorly advised trip to the USA to visit a man I was dating on Skype that I got into photography. That was thanks to the otherwise rather unpleasant man who lent me a high end camera during my visit. My dad gifted me a Nikon D90 when I had met Martin, and I started to engage with photography, but my equipment wasn’t quite good enough. A few years ago, I started playing with my iPhone, and was able to create imagery through double exposure and other experiments that also made it to some exhibitions. But I developed carpal tunnel soon thereafter and a general lack of motivation to fight for attention as an artist. I always hated competitions anyway. And I haven’t made any art since then.
It was always like this. Just when I had figured something out, it was over because of physical and mental limitations. While I don’t seem to have ADHD, I certainly have traits of ADD and that could account for some of my problems with focus. But that’s of course only a small part of the story. It’s infinitely frustrating to look back at a life so plagued by illness that I could never become the fully fledged artist I could otherwise have been.
Series “The Stage” (1-4), 2020, featuring photos of my illustrious adoptive grandmother Edith von Bonsdorff who danced with the Swedish Ballet and starred in Relâche (1924):
IN THE WORDS OF OTHERS
The authenticity of Vivi-Mari Carpelan's works is exemplary. In her collages and video works, Carpelan courageously strips away layers of convention, routine, and social acceptability to reveal the magic and mystery of what it means to be human in a manner which transcends individuality and invites her audiences to enter her world and share in her explorations. Tämä on taidetta, joka koskettaa sydäntä ("This is art, that touches the heart") ( Jonathan Talbot, artist and editor of collageart.org), New York, 2014.
Fabulous music! Well done, Vivi-Mari. Like nothing else. I'm drawn to what you are doing because it's genuinely uplifting and disturbing at the same time! (Nigel Evans ("Scribbleman" at Greed The Rock Opera) musician, journalist and arts marketing officer, UK, 2014
I've just finished watching Tides and it's so haunting..... I think this is furthered by your soundtrack... I was going to ask where the music is from, but I see from your blog it is an amalgamation of different sounds both captured and staged. I found the film very sad but also that there was a sense of liberation and freedom in this. It reminded me of the work of the Japanese directors like Hideo Nakata. (Beth Davies-Hofbauer MA, visual artist, UK 2014)
All your work contains presence and a deep understanding, almost a kind of mediation, and they convey interesting messages and viewpoints. I have never had the desire to own anybody else's artwork. This tells me something, which I find difficult to put words to. I experience your art in a strong and special way. Even after seeing just a few of your previous pieces a long time ago, I started to cry. I felt that from your brush, something that I was pondering and experiencing on a deep level, came into being - something that I didn't have the means to express, but you did. You make something within me physically visible and in a way that is 'wonderful' and perfect, sarcastic, teasing, insightful, deeply artistic, wise and a kind of message, too.
It feels as though you look at something from the outside and make it visible to others, but at the same time you're in it and the art is very much a part of you - this is all thrilling and perfectly new! I'm not sure why, but I always experience your work - also the multimedia projects - very profoundly. I really come to life when I encounter you and your work. To say that I love your work is not enough. Somehow they really nourish me and I stay hungry after each one of your pieces... It's like a passion... and believe me, I'm not exaggerating in the slightest! (Kirsi Salo, senior legal adviser for the Finnish film industry, Finland 2013)
This is absolutely splendid work. You combine the photographs of yourself with everything else in each collage in a seamless manner; the result is a unique dialogue between Self & Self-Who-Is-Other. It is a visual narrative that when viewed in its entirety flows from picture to picture like a stream of successive scenes in a diary. (Eric Edelman, collage artist at RetroCollage, New York 2012)
I honestly think the smarter you are the more unsatisfied you can be... because there is so much to see with your eyes so wide to questioning life and purpose and the rest... one thing I feel sure of is that whenever you can honour your talents you should. Perhaps sometimes that is all you can do. And you do it with finesse! I can see something burning in your work.. there's definitely fire in it... and whatever the roots are.. you are using them... which is of course brilliance! You mustn't be ignorant and I'm not sure you could be if you tried.. your eyes are wide open. Like I said... think your coming to a flourishing point. Gotta say wow to your boldness and bravery and it reminds me a tiny bit of Gilbert and George...
in the body revealing and the partitions... now they are great... you are great… these are the guys who love the aesthetic of surfaces and science... I'm sure you already know who they are... but they have one another to hide behind even with their revealings... the woman that does this alone... if we were to align to a tracey emin paradigm then she is self revelatory… she is not the first, she is just the exposed one, so like herself... You are a pioneer. (A visual artist, 2012)
'THE TIMES OF MEMORY'
Collage—an art technique which blossomed during the twentieth-century—displays on a two dimensional surface images and texts from various sources, constructing these into a complex and dynamic whole, the component images retaining their own independence as recognisably distinct in style and origin.
Vivi-Mari Carpelan's contemporary collages are profoundly noteworthy. In their enactment of deep symbolic logics, they do nothing less than re-configure time.
Some of the source imagery comes from Hindu art, evoking an ancient and ongoing tradition. Other imagery originates in advertisements from past decades, evincing a nostalgia where loss can never quite be recovered or redeemed. Still other imagery comes from prints of Neo-Classical architecture, a building style that resurrects the antique past in producing stone monuments that defy the ravages of time. More haunting and playful are skeletal images of extinct species, tokens of the arising and perishing of all particular life forms within a vast and mysterious evolutionary unfolding. The esoteric and alchemical diagrams dispersed throughout key an anticipatory time proper to secreted promises yet to be revealed.
The space of these collages is thus the arena of a profound mode of Memory (an inflection of Consciousness itself)—a Memory that is prior to any given form or feel of time, and which accommodates all such forms, allowing them to reverberate with each other through the part/whole dynamic of the collage construction. This is an Art of Memory that is not simply retrospective and receptive, but powerfully and profoundly Creative: the interplay of the imagery sparking novel senses of time—transforming the Self-sense so tenderly and vulnerably at stake in these works. (Michael Schwartz , Professor of History and Philosophy of Art, Augusta State University, Augusta GA, 2011)
Texts that have accompanied my solo exhibitions in the past:
(Retrospective of Ten Years of Handmade Collages, Milkwood Gallery, Cardiff 2012)
In this exhibition I will be showing as many of my handmade collages as will possibly fit the walls of the lovely Milkwood Gallery. The themes I have been grappling with over the past ten years are mostly emotional, as my attention turned from a more theoretical attitude to life to one that was about living life for real. I was contemplating destiny and expressing feelings of being bound to one that for many reasons I couldn't escape. Ultimately, it was a sense of purpose rather than nihilism, albeit at a price. Life often felt like a kind of sacrifice for the acquisition of greater wisdom and understanding. As always, my images express paradox, as the hard lessons of life usually have a constructive side to them. Learning about emotions is learning how to be more human.
GARLANDS OF FRESHLY CUT TEARS
(First Exhibition in the U.K., 2010)
Due to various challenges, I have experienced the social status of someone that society thinks of as second-rate. All in all, even though the themes may appear dark at times, my images are usually imbued with a desire to overcome adversity. Although I started out by drawing and painting on paper (mixed media, in other words), I resorted to the creation of collages due to physical difficulties. I am fascinated with the interaction between a particular feeling, state of being or social critique that enters my mind and the images that I discover and compile to match these visions. I enjoy the communication that takes place between me and the collective. I also add my own visual elements such as personal photos and drawings. My aim is to present my personal sphere of reference in relation to the rest of the world in symbolic terms, as I find symbols a powerful way of conveying a mixture of thoughts and feelings. My symbolic language is in parts universal, in parts personal. I feel affinity with artists such as Giorgio de Chirico, Gustav Klimt, Renée Magritte and Frida Kahlo. I say with Frida Kahlo that although my art may appear surreal, this is not quite true since I actually express my own reality and not a fabricated one.
THE PETRIFIED TREES (2009)
(View photo gallery here)
“As the daughter of two photographers, photography has always played an important role in my life, even though other forms of visual expression have taken the forefront. Thanks to the ease with which I can now process photos, the digital age has inspired a renewed interest in photography. I spent last winter in Kansas, USA, where the harsh weather condition literally took the local habitants by storm. While others huddled together for warmth in their abodes, myself and my adventurous American friend made over 20 trips to a large lake, Clinton Lake. It was surrounded by a difficult terrain that was clearly left to its own devices and seldom visited. Therefore these trips weren't simple strolls in the countryside, but quite hazardous at times. The fact that I was offered the use of a camera of high quality allowed me to capture the endless changes in the unexpected weather conditions and the splendid sunsets on a spot in nature that was anything but pretty in the conventional sense. There are no natural lakes in Kansas, so land has been evacuated to make room for boating and sports in the summer time.
In the large Clinton Lake the trees had been left so that during times of low tide in the winter the dead skeletons of these trees would rise above the water, or, as was often the case during this exceptional winter, the ice. The muddy shores were lined with fossils, unbelievable amounts of knotty trees that had fallen over, and fascinating roots that often appeared quite humorous. At close range, as well as from further afield, this landscape with the ghost trees and the strange balance between natural and artificial was surreal. I hope this unusual environment will offer an interesting visual experience!
TWISTS OF FATE
(Exhibition 2009, Finland)
The exhibition deals with introspection and insights in regard to earlier traumas, as well as love relationships which often carry traits of problems that have not been solved. It’s possible to read the artwork as a story; vulnerability and fear are connected to thoughts about destiny and the wounds that one has been inflicted with during one’s life. The advice other people give often harm more than they help. The quest for love is confusing when you realize that you can’t get all that you need from a partner. Expectations, broken promises and disappointments may however in the best of cases lead to a freedom of the fear of loneliness, liberation and a greater focus on one’s own creativity as a source of satisfaction.
VIBRATIONS FROM THE DIMENSION OF SILENCE
(Exhibition 1998, Finland)
Far away from the humdrum of daily life lies an ancient site, a secret garden where reigns the deepest silence. This is where you can find the most fertile soil, water and all the prerequisites for the greatest splendour one can imagine - however, the warmth and the light is missing! As abandoned and empty as it seems, it is easy to believe that there is nothing to be found in this place. But if one of these days you are able to get loose from the toil and wear of day-to-day obligations and take the long and winding road to this place, then I am sure that you will be abundantly rewarded with floral splendour, birdsong and tasty fruits. Why? Because you are the warmth and the light. It is in the light of your consciousness that the force of life will come to being.
This is my experience of the mysterious being of silence. Silence is the soil of possibilities in which our experiences and intuitive insights are grounded. Our creative power flows out of the dimension of silence in order to manifest itself in symbolic pictures. Our rational mind is able to analyse and use these pictures in order to increase the understanding of our own development. It is from the dimension of silence that our desire to create and our will to live burst forth, all that make us co-creators of the world in which we live in. But how much do we actually use our inner potential? How much confidence do we have in our own creativity? Are we daring enough to clear the brushy path to our secret garden, or do we prefer to live our lives controlled by fear and anxiety only because this is what we are accustomed to? Do we dare to say yes to our inner development, to movement and change, to mental risk taking, to challenges and to our own intuition? Are you brave enough to listen to your inner voice and follow the vibrations to your silent and secretive homestead, and see what there is to be found?
My pictures follow the logic of dreams, where every colour and every detail owns a symbolic meaning in relation to its environment. I hope that they can be enjoyed and experienced as such, intuitively and emotionally, just like dreams and myths, but also rationally through the help of the intellect. Maybe one way of conduct does not necessarily exclude the other? I believe in a balance between polarities, and in a creative use of all the aspects and resources of our mental self!
THE TEARS OF SAMSARA
(Exhibition 1998, Finland)
Tears of sorrow, tears of joy... Tears rejuvenate and cleanse us. Something dies away and leaves space for change. In the dynamic chaos of transformation the creative seed of potentiality is coming into being. From the ground that has become sopping wet and painful, the tender stalk of a new plant is cautiously reaching upwards, always with the same urgent desire to be noticed and taken care of, to receive love, warmth and light. Nothing lives in complete darkness. But without the darkness, the cold and the shadows, the light and the warmth would be meaningless. In the same way it is grief that provides joy with depth and meaning.
In the world views of Hinduism and Buddhism, Samsara is the name of the cycle of life. Life follows death and death follows life. Constant, dynamic change characterizes the inner being of life, and this is something that goes on inside as well as outside of us. But how solid are in actual fact the boundaries between inner and outer, between life and death, between sorrow and happiness? How solid and unchangeable is the one who is residing inside this body and perceiving all this? My experience of life is that the winds of change are blowing right through me, all the time, without interruption. I have no choice but to give them the space they require.
ENCOUNTER ENGENDERS LIFE
(Exhibition 1999, Finland)
When I look out towards the world, the world comes to greet me. The moment I perceive myself in the vast mirror of reality, I come to being. I am able to see myself - my shape, my features, my thoughts, my feelings, and my soul. All this is being born in the interaction between me and my environment, because it is the experience of this constellation that helps me redefine myself. Books, pictures, objects, people... all these things help me see and understand myself. The encounter lends me the mirror. Without this mirror I am not able to grow, change and become whole.
Life is an encounter, a play of opposites, a breathtaking dance where we unite and pull away, in the whirlwind of life, inwards and outwards, in oneness and in separation.... Like the natural flow of breathing or the play of the waves, like the gushing power of creativity from a well of life that never dries up. Do I dare to encounter life? Do I dare to encounter you? With an open gaze and an open mind? Perhaps the answer to the riddle of life is in the open gaze in the mirror that I encounter?
EVE'S EYE
(Exhibition 1997, Finland)
I don't see feeling and intellect as mutually exclusive, but rather as complementary functions. Together with another pair of opposites, the physical and the spiritual, I perceive four central inner aspects that should stand in a balanced relationship to one another.
This idea stands as the basis for one of my life's greatest mysteries, and it is this enigma that I try and express through my life and art, possibly even trying to find some answers to.
The name of this exhibition is “Eve's Eye”, because the main focus of my inner search has been with my life's feminine, more emotional aspects. In my imaginary world, Eve has come to represent the more receptive, introspective and intuitive sides of myself. The eye also points to inner , as well as outer perception. Occasionally, Adam also steps onto the stage, because all that he represents – extrovertion, mental and analytical reasoning – shouldn't be ignored. Even Adam has important challenges to deal with. There are also moments, when both of them come together in harmony. The experience can be painful, but sometimes truly blissful. Finally, there are moments of silence when neither one of them can be seen. Are they about to arrive, or have they already left?