What is contemporary visual art?
Contemporary visual arts include classics such as painting, drawing, graphics, sculpture, and architecture, as well as photography, collage, video art, graffiti, sketching, decorative arts (ceramics, jewelry, textiles, mosaics), tattooing, body art, and design.
So, everything we see and perceive with our eyes is contemporary visual art!
How and why does visual art help with adaptation and integration?
Overcoming the language barrier.
Images are understandable without translation—they overcome the language barrier. Through photography, painting, graphics, or video, a person can express their thoughts and feelings, even if words are not yet available to them.
Fixing and realizing new experiences.
When a person moves, they go through stages of adaptation:
- Shock (everything seems foreign and unfamiliar).
- Habituation (you begin to notice details).
- Mastery (the new environment becomes part of your world).
Photography or painting allows you to document this process. Through art, you can realize your path of integration, see progress.
Interaction with locals.
When a person creates art, they enter into a cultural dialogue. For example, a photographer capturing street life in a new country can strike up conversations with residents, learn their stories, and become part of the community.
Balance between the old and new home.
Migrants often use art to maintain a connection with their homeland while mastering new cultural codes. In this sense, visual arts become a tool for preserving identity, but in the context of a new place.
Emotional support and therapy.
Creating visual art helps to cope with loneliness, anxiety, and feelings of loss. Many migrant artists use art as a form of art therapy to express their fears, hopes, and sensations.
Let’s summarize:
Visual arts are not just a means of self-expression.
They help to:
- Overcome language barriers.
- Realize your integration process.
- Interact with locals.
- Find a balance between the old and new home.
- Experience adaptation more easily.
A way to capture and comprehend new experiences
Photography, painting, and other means of visualization allow you to document the process of adapting to a new life, a new place, and a new culture.
Therefore, if you prefer to express your feelings through images, it will be very useful to keep an art journal that will allow you to track your integration path.
An art journal can be anything you like. With sketches, photos, notes. You can pour out any emotions onto its pages. There are no restrictions.
You can also keep an art journal on your phone. For example, the iPhone offers a simple “Journal” app for this. The app, by the way, is very convenient. You can add photos, illustrations, audio, and, of course, text to each entry. Plus, it has prompts on what topic to write about today.
Keeping an art journal (on your smartphone or in a notebook, on a computer or in an album) allows you to express your emotions, fears, and hopes.
It absolutely doesn’t matter if you know how to draw or take photos.
Everything that is done from the heart is already a work of art.
And art has always helped people find new meanings, faith, support, as well as new connections, acquaintances, and, as a result, integration into the space in which a person finds themselves.
This is how we find harmony with ourselves and the place we are in.
Integration is a process. A process is a duration. It is impossible to get used to something new overnight. Some people adapt faster, some slower, and that’s normal. There are no templates or standards to fit into. Integration is a deeply personal, intimate process.
Praise yourself for every step on this path. You have already done a lot!
visual research
