HOMAGE, Healing our Losses

Year
2019

Technic
117 paper maché and 23K golf leaf bowls

Paper mâché bowls dimensions
From 6 cm to 70 cm

A grief process and a self-care practice through which oncology healthcare professionals processed their loss and grief.

In 2019, Marie Barincou undertook a 9 months placement at the Canberra Hospital. Her role was to offer arts therapy interventions across the Oncology Wards. The amount of loss that oncology staff experience through caring of patience can sometimes be glossed over.

“What happens to our relationships once people we cared for disappear from our lives?”

The bowl making activity offered participants an opportunity to reflect on and spend time with someone who had physically disappeared from their life.

HOMAGE was an arts-based project that explored the impermanent nature of existence and our relationships, their beauty and their impact on our life. The project aimed at acknowledging and honouring our connections with people whose life path had intersected with ours. Making a paper mâché bowl was a ritual to pay tribute to someone with whom we no longer had a living contact, to express and celebrate the memories and connections we had of people who have passed on, vanished or disappeared (often because of death). It was a way of giving a material expression to their presence and impact in our life.

“These bowls contain our emotions, feelings and shared memories. They are a celebration of existence.”

HOMAGE unfolded over 10 weeks and involved 63 participants. Participants included healthcare workers (oncology, ICU, and Palliative Care nurses, social workers, counsellors and psychologists) hospital patients, their friends and family members, and others in the community who had been impacted by loss or affected by grief.

Collaborative art making was a way of giving material expression to the presence and impact that patients had made in their lives.

This project included making bowls of rice papier mâché and 23 Carat gold leaf associated with the evocation of an individual or a group. While making their bowl, individuals shared memories, feelings and experiences, thinking of the person to whom they were paying tribute. Marie Barincou took notes of what was expressed.

As the arts therapist, she made one bowl for each significant connection she had during my placement.

Ultimately, 179 paper mâché bowls were made during 28 encounters.

“Paper bowls, in their lightness, represent how fragile life is. Gold symbolises how precious our connections are.”

Copyright
Marie Barincou, All Right Reserved