Love and Remembrance : Process Art on Coping with Grief

Abstract

This article is the documentary evidence of an artistic process, which aims to disclose the phenomenon of creating art with the formulated process. The researcher aims to gain an insight into the mechanism by which art can be a means of coping with grief. It is a qualitative study through in-depth interview and participatory action research from the perspectives of creator, who make art alone in private, make art alone in public, and make art together with participants in public. The study is reviewed by the advisor who is the project manager of Galleries’ Nights Bangsaen event. It was found that the process which photographs selected by those who grief are projected on the drawing space for tracing could help coping with grief. When the details of the deceased’s smile are enlarged, the participant’s positive memory could be triggered that one is aware of the moment in time when they were together happily. The poetic process thus induce the bittersweet smile which is nevertheless a smile. Meanwhile, making art together and displaying art in the public might be the opportunity for the political community to assure that the relationship shared by the deceased and the participant is real and still exists. The deceased and the participant continue to be the part of each other despite the death of one person. In this way the community helps returning the temporarily-loss self to the participant who is coping with grief. At the end, grief is no longer necessary as the blank space is fulfilled.