Creating Art and Cultivating Intimacy During a Global Pandemic

Abstract

The global COVID-19 pandemic caused many of us to pause, shift, and problem solve as our personal and shared worlds were turning upside down. In the spring of 2020, in my personal world, this problem solving looked like figuring out how to adapt an honors thesis project exploring women, apology, and the body from an in-person experience to a digital one. It looked like deciphering the possibilities of technology and experimenting with ways to facilitate community, storytelling, and exchange through the computer. It looked like shifting how I thought about presence and healing work, especially the circumstances under which they could exist. Little did I know that through this process of upheaval and change, I would connect deeper to the self, deeper to the community, and deeper to the work.