but who am I?
the concept of boundaries through art
When the themes, boundaries, contrast, and reflection were set for my first exhibition with my Art Collective, I knew straight away that boundaries would be the one that would drive most of my work. Even saying the word boundaries out loud gives me a bittersweet feeling. It is a word we read all over social media and overhear in our personal and professional lives. This word engages us in conversations day in and day out. It sometimes feels like the whole world is talking about boundaries. You hear advice like, "Cut people out if they aren't aligned with what you want." "Avoid people who trigger you."
When I first started talking to my therapist about boundaries, I was like a pendulum swinging from one far side to the other, from people pleasing to expecting people to change or even cutting them off completely. I still remember feeling incredibly empowered when I read a quote on Instagram that said, "The only people who get upset about you setting boundaries are the ones who were benefiting from you having none." I thought, great, I knew it, I'm right! If people disagree with me, I will just cut them off. But as time passed, I realised that was also not the way to go and probably not the intention behind the quote. The more I practised setting boundaries, the better I became at it. I still have a long way to go, especially since I am Mediterranean and come from a very family-oriented culture. Hello, Mum, Dad and the rest of my beautiful family! It is much easier these days to set boundaries with friends as I continue to practice daily, but with my family, I still struggle. It's a constant battle between what I want and my family's wants and needs. It's so easy to swing from one extreme to another and not be able to find a steady ground.
Boundaries are about us! It's about what I choose to engage in and allow in my life. They are not about controlling other people's behaviour. We can’t control other people, but we can decide whether we want to enable this behaviour to take up space in our lives and minds. When I started brainstorming for the exhibition, I wrote down these words, which also became the press release description for my sculpture.
But who am I?
No. Is a complete sentence. A boundary shows me where I end and someone else begins. Lack of personal boundaries is losing our sense of self. Our view of ourselves is distorted and broken. We start wondering, but who am I? I don't even know who I am anymore. We absorb "their" identities so that our Identity gets lost—identity crisis. We look into a mirror with the veins of other people's identities.
My view of myself was distorted for many years because I was constantly people-pleasing. Often, what I wanted and what other people wanted was entangled. I thought what people wanted was what I wanted, too. But I did not have the tools to understand not only what I really wanted but also I couldn’t differentiate between my needs and the needs of others. I kept thinking of a mirror when writing these words that eventually became the press release. A broken mirror where our view of ourselves is distorted because we don't know where we end and someone else begins. So when we look in the mirror, we see only glimpses of ourselves. Other people's identities, needs, and wants are in our veins because we can't distinguish between them and ourselves anymore, and there comes a point where we start asking ourselves, but who am I? Sometimes, this distorted self-view happens when we are going through a significant life change, a breakup, children leaving the nest, the death of a loved one or, for some like me, starting therapy. Boundaries then begin having a very different meaning; they are no longer just a buzzword but something we need to engage with.
A poem I wrote for my artwork:
To do what you are being told is easy To do what you want is seen as greedy But the easy is not to be me To be me is to be free To be free of expectations, of justifications, of conformations Life is full of deviations and explorations Let me be me, free of dree
That said, boundaries are such a delicate topic. It feels effortless to talk and write about it, but applying them to our lives is extremely hard. The irony is that I picked epoxy to work with for my sculpture, a material as delicate as boundaries. While working with epoxy is easy in theory, you combine resin and hardener at the recommended mix ratio and transfer it into a silicone container to harden. In practice, it proved challenging due to its sensitivity as a material. Getting the conditions right for epoxy is extremely tough. Too hot, too cold, too much humidity, too little humidity, thick layer, thin layer, the brand, the mould and many other factors all play a role in creating epoxy art. The same delicate conditions apply when setting our boundaries, too! We often don't know how to set boundaries because we don't know what they are or where to begin. We feel unsure of our needs, wants, and preferences, or we feel that previous boundaries have shifted, and we're trying to understand why and/or what that means. It could also be that we are worried about hurting other people's feelings, or we may have been made to feel bad about setting boundaries in the past. It's so easy to swing on the far sides of either too rigid or too loose on the pendulum. The same way I approached working with epoxy is how we can become better at setting boundaries, testing them, adjusting and testing them again, like a scientist. We are close enough to firm but with room for movement.
Only sometime after I finished my artwork did I connect the dots and realise it wasn't such a coincidence that I ended up working with epoxy. As frustrating as it was, I learned a lot, but most importantly, I learned to have patience and not expect perfection. There is no such thing as perfection when learning to set boundaries, and there is also no perfection when making art. We are all learning to live! Life is a continuous learning process, and the more I learn and explore, the more fulfilling and enriching my life will be, but there isn't a finish line. By being curious, we can better understand ourselves, others, and the world around us.
Your friend Tuğba
I read in Rollo May’s book “Man’s Search For Himself” where a patient said to him “I feel like a collection of mirrors reflecting back what other people expect of me”. That hit me. Not knowing who you really are because you’ve built your identity by choosing to show us as other people would want you to. The last few years I’ve been fascinating by the idea of pulling back all of the layers and finding out who is underneath it all.
I loved this so deeply. It’s probably because I feel like it could have been a note written directly to me. Boundaries are incredibly challenging for me. I appreciated this perspective, these thoughts, and the beautiful poem.