Self Portrait with a Mask

Paweł Sasin

Self Portrait with a Mask

Abstract

Paweł SASIN - Self Portrait with a Mask “Every work of art is the child of its time, and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions. “ Wassily Kandynsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art The two years 2020 and 2021 were marked by the COVID-19 pandemic – a lengthy period of time in which everyone felt in danger of losing one’s health or life. As a result, many people were experiencing negative emotion, becoming subject to psychological stress: feeling anxious, fearful, frustrated, upset, depressed. In such situations, finding motivations to overcome these feelings is crucial and positive, as it helps people to overcome inactivity and achieve goals. During the phase of stress mobilization, one often experiences elevated efficiency of intellectual and cognitive processes: the ability to make associations and conceive unique ideas is enhanced, as well as one’s sensitivity to stimuli; which results in people accessing a greater range of their potential abilities (Frączek, Kofta, „Frustracja i stres psychologiczny”/ “Frustration and Psychological Stress”). What I am about to present is an attempt to address the question of the influence which the COVID-19 pandemic, as a socially challenging experience, may have had on the spontaneity and authenticity of creative imagination possessed by people studying architecture. Obligatory isolation, social distancing and other restraining regulations, dangers stemming from the infectious qualities of the disease, finally the huge number of gravely ill and deceased victims – those circumstance served as a trigger to ask architecture students at the Gdańsk University of Technology to create a piece on the topic Self Portrait with a Mask as part of their sculpture course.