MY LEFT-HAND IS TALKING AND MY RIGHT-HAND IS NURTURING
Jessica Field

The collection of poetry and drawings in My left-hand is talking and my right-hand is nurturing, explores the experience of moving past survival mode to let go of false perceptions of self, building the capacity to reclaim a truer sense of identity. It is about the experience of living with inexplicable illness and pain, loss of memory, abuse, love, and loss. It celebrates the beauty of imagination’s power to heal the body, rejuvenate our sense of self, and teach better ways of living.

Everything Jessica Field makes is biased to her lived experience. She creates AI drawings to explore new configurations on what drawing about pure emotion can be about in relation to the greater concept of the human condition. The artist’s drawings act as material that is reinterpreted by an “other”, to compose hundreds of variations as a way of seeing greater possibilities outside the limits of her lived experience. This “other” remains anchored by the artist’s genuine inner emotional life exploring how feelings, unconscious memory and experience is embodied in the gesture of line, in how the exploration into the self can lead to visual expressions that are universally relatable and authentic to lived experience.

The objective of these drawings is to illustrate the complicated space in dealing with the human bias, ignorance, and still manage to connect and understand a divergent perspective. This project shows how empathy and perspective taking bridges these gaps by putting the discussion into the space of universal human experience where we all can relate to each other.

Jessica Field works with installation, video and performance to create AI systems to show the impact of our environment on mental health and how individual histories and temperaments influence the ways that we live our lives. Jessica has exhibited in Sweden, Switzerland, Austria and Canada. She has shown in Electrohype 2008, the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, Oboro, Optica, the Museum Tingely and at Kunsthaus Graz. 

Jessica teaches as a full-time sessional at Toronto Metropolitan University; she received her AOCAD at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto, Ontario and her MFA at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec.

Artist website:  jessicafield.ca

Credits

Coding Visual Layout Algorithm: Meera Balendran
Book Designer: Lisa Kiss Design
Video and Editing: Empty Cup Media
Images, Poetry, and Artificial Life Algorithms: Jessica Field

Content Warnings

This artwork contains content that may be triggering to some individuals.

Keywords: Anxiety | Grief | Psychiatry | Trauma

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