An Art Therapy–Based Exploration of Identity in the Intermediate Area
Holding and Becoming is an art therapy-inspired workshop designed for artists and art workers working across various disciplines of visual arts. The gathering creates a non-competitive, care-centered environment where participants are invited to slow down, suspend external expectations, and attend to the internal processes that shape artistic identity. The workshop is held in English.
Positioned at the intersection of artistic practice and therapeutic inquiry, the workshop offers a structured yet open space for exchange, reflection, and experimentation. Participants engage in a structured series of guided art therapy-based solo and group exercises, among many transitional interim activities. Holding and Becoming invites its participants to come as they are. The one-day workshop will involve active participation of the participants, cultivating for collectivity before the participants return to their solo practices.
Rather than focusing on critique or production, the workshop emphasis is placed on listening—both inwardly and collectively—and on cultivating emotional resilience through creative exploration.
Conceptual Framework
The workshop draws on the object relations theory of British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, particularly his concept of the transitional object and the intermediate area of experience. Winnicott described how, in early development, the infant negotiates the separation from the mother through transitional phenomena—objects or gestures that serve as emotional bridges between inner psychic reality and the external world.
The workshop intends to extend this framework into artistic practice. Art-making is approached as a contemporary form of transitional space: a living, intermediate area where inner impulses meet outer structures; where the “true self” and the “false self” can be examined; and where identity is not fixed but continuously negotiated.
The process emphasizes reciprocity, mutual witnessing, and collaborative growth. Participants are encouraged to experiment without the pressure to produce resolved works. Instead, unfinished gestures, fragments, and uncertainties are welcomed as material for inquiry.
Target Audience
This workshop is intended for artists and cultural practitioners interested in bridging contemporary art and psychological inquiry. It is particularly suited for those navigating transitional phases, early exploration in their practice, or questioning established modes of artistic self-definition. At Photo North, the workshop content will be designed to cater to artists who work with lens-based medium and photography art.
Program Outline
Settling In
Online Introduction by Bobby Yu Shuk Pui
The visual artist and filmmaker based in Hong Kong and Oslo as well as one-third of Elderflower Club, Bobby Yu Shuk Pui, will talk about her practice and how she shifts her focus to the dimension of social engagement and community building. Bobby Yu Shuk Pui works with video, text, installation, sculpture, collaboration and performance. She often explores speculative fiction and biotechnology to question identity, gender, and bodily narratives. In recent years, her artistic narrative has extended into the realms between contemporary art and art psychology.
Holding: Transitional Object – Exercise led by Haylie Yi-Chien Chang
Lunch Break
Becoming: Collective Imaging – Exercise led by Wendy Chih-Tung Lin
Tea Break
Reflective Art Making -Exercise
Closure and Goodbye
Meet the facilitators
The one-day workshop will be co-faciliated by Wendy Chih-Tung Lin (Helsinki-based curator) and Haylie Yi-Chien Chang (Brussels-based art therapist) from the recently established art collective Elderflower Club, an initiative fostering cross-disciplinary dialogue between contemporary art and art psychology.
About Elderflower Club
Elderflower Club (長女的計劃) creates space for creatives to gather, exchange, and hold one another through art-therapy-informed methods. The members consist of three practitioners working across creative and psychological fields between Europe and Asia: Bobby Shuk Pui Yu (Oslo-based artist), Wendy Chih-Tung Lin (Helsinki-based curator), and Haylie Yi-Chien Chang (Brussels-based art therapist).
The three grew up as eldest daughters and became aware early of responsibility, expectation, and emotional labour within the family. Now living abroad, at a distance from where they were raised. That distance shapes their work.
Elderflower Club (長女的計劃) thrives in a collaborative environment, teaming up with likeminded art, creative spaces and institutions to deliver workshops, hold discussions, and facilitate residency programs on a sustainable basis.
Instagram: @elderflowerclub
Timeline:
19 April, 10:00-16:00 with small tea breaks and a 1 hour lunch break
For enquiries please contact:
Chih-Tung Lin: chihtunglinchihtung@gmail.com
Enroll by April 17th, 16:00 via Google Forms: https://forms.gle/phrA8pEGT9NFvm2u7
Holding and Becoming, in collaboration with Photo North – Northern Photographic Centre, is part of the European Capital of Culture, Oulu2026, cultural programme, among many other creative agencies to switch up the cultural climate of the northern Finland region.