The Necessity of Two Magpies
Project details
- Year
- 2023
- Programme
- Bachelor – Illustration
- Practices
- Commercial
- Minor
- Branding
As she sat in complete aloneness and silence, she carefully observed how she was drowning.
The Necessity of Two Magpies
Nikki Grobben’s graphic novel uses the absurdness of the Indoor Swimming Paradise environment as a metaphor for her spiritual identity.
As her interest in the subconscious proves to be challenging to explain to those interested, Nikki applied her art in a way she does best. It forms a visual translative tool, offering clearance on clarifying the abstract. Through the formation of environmental studies, simplified self-portraits, symbolic objects, and written expressions, she explores how her personified symbol of good fortunes, the two magpies, relates explicitly to her spiritual identity.
On the unexperienced written
In her written debut, she showcases the formation between the practices of the familiar and the unknown. “I have always had an interest in the practice of story writing and poetry, but found not to have the experience to deliver work of quality expected by the outside environment. Its written content does not imply to be of perfectness, but rather discovers the practice of an inexperienced writer, and how it re-formulates with the assemblage of my visual formations.”
The collective practice of the magpie
The practice of the collective, which remarkably can be found in magpie’s behavior, is recognized in the collaboration between various solo-standing objects. Where the species is acknowledged for its attraction to the shining, it is implied by The Centre for Research in Animal Behavior at the University of Exeter that the interaction between magpies and glossy objects themselves is often observed due to their outspoken appearance in contrast to their surroundings, becoming more noticeable for the human species. Therefore, the publication aims not to present what is
perceived and collected by the feathered species, but to showcase the gloss in everyday objects, which generally would go unnoticed by others. The visual of the magpie does not signify the act of the collective of shimmer, but the observed within others’ viewpoint of perspective, their sensories magnified. It aims to be seen.
Imprisonment in the liminal space
The publication involves subjects in relatedness to her experience with depression, being unfitting of the norm and pressure found in re-formulating her identity, and the therianthrope found in the in-between of women’s adolescence. “As I was in an unfortunate state of mind, I experienced how I was enclosed in an unilluminated environment. When I started to heal, I felt as if I had been standing in still motion during adolescence.” Where the transformative would normally have been present in the liminal space, she was encapsulated by the effort of keeping her head above the surface. “I found difficulties in adapting myself to the present tense. I also had to make peace with my younger self, as I would often treat her as the separate, as a tool of comparison rather than delivering kindness. This project represents the reunion of what was perceived as the separate, now recognized as one and the same, despite their dissimilarities. It becomes a love letter to one’s self. “
Socials
www.nikkigrobben.com
@nikki.grobben on Instagram
© 2023 Nikki Grobben