Unit 2.
How can art activities relieve ageing anxieties: Case studies of 10 middle aged Korean women?
• Intro: As a Korean middle-aged (b.1978, age 43) woman, I face several problems of being recently.
First, as a woman, we Koreans have high standard of facial and physical beauty and pathological obsession on the youth. It is more severe in my former area, broadcasting news field. After that, I personally was a Facebook influencer and public speaker; the pressure is even harsh.
Second, as a mum to two boys in 10s, we should manage well children’s education. Koreans are like other Asian tiger parents from China and India especially weighing for the names of the school. Where their children jump in, could be mums’ transcripts even though we already have our own jobs apart from being mums. Our career only could be perfect with children’s ‘success’.
Third, as a daughter and daughter-in-law, we still have responsibilities for caring old parents physically, mentally, and economically from families of origin. We even should prepare our later lives after retirement because our children would not feel their responsibilities for caring us.
We, the people around the ‘generation X’ are the generation in between for every aspect. Feeling ageing anxieties are natural in these stressful circumstances. And women are more vulnerable. (*I also tried to collect the relationships between men’s ageing anxieties and the art activities but did not hire the cases in this primal research. See the reasons at Audience.) So, how can deal with it? And why I choose the art as curing methods?
Here I define or adopt the terms.
-middle-aged who in their ages starting with 40s and ending of 50s.
-ageing means growing older physically and mentally between their middle-age.
-ageing anxiety is the anxiety for the process of getting old.
-art activities are all activities related to the art including going to the galleries and museums, learning art history or art investment, collecting art pieces, taking art therapy, and making art products from doodling to doing sincere projects on their own.
-generation X is the demographic cohort following the baby boomers and preceding the millennials, being generally defined as people born from 1965 to 1980.
• Question: How can ageing anxieties of middle-aged Korean women be reduced by art activities?
• Research Methodology: Qualitative research; Deep Interview via zoom and in person and participatory observation.
• Research:
-Primary research: Doing interventions in August.
-Secondary research: Reading references about ageing, anti-ageing, art therapy, and watching interviews and shows of ageing role models and middle-aged influencers during June and July as a preparation. Especially anti-ageing is directly related to skin-deep beauties in Korea getting by cosmetics and surgeries. And art therapy is only utilised in children’s education in Korea’s severe competition environment especially for education. There’s almost nothing about the art therapy for the middle-aged.
By the way, currently ‘K-granny (Korean grandmother)’ is phenomenal to younger generation especially for women in Korea. Our society is looking for a modern, sophisticated, and wise role model, and they are quite rare. Now the new dialogue about well-ageing has been started.
• Intervention: Releasing and doing together below tasks during August in Seoul and Jeju, Korea. Participants did anything more than one of each during one month.
-Going to the museums, galleries, and auction houses.
-Buying art pieces or art products.
-Drawing or making anything.
-Consulting with art therapist.
Originally planned a group art retreat to Jeju for two or three days along with an artist/art therapist who makes mandala from micro plastics by seaside as an environmental campaign and a reflection of we as becoming into trashes to the Mother Earth. However, the government Covid restriction turned into the highest level and every gathering more than 4 during the daytime, and 2 during the nighttime was canceled and the beach was closed. Only did it once with one more woman for just gathering the micro plastics from the seashore and then after the session going with my little son and made our own mandala.
• Audience: I observed several candidates around myself for last few months among all friends, colleagues and acquaintance and then gathered and selected 10 women who has sincere personalities with different demographics on those common places where we are as middle-aged women. I’ve already known them at least 3 years at most 14 years.
One of them is a book celebrity who are happily married with no kid, one of them is another book celebrity who divorced without kids, the other is a media expert at Seoul who divorced with one child, and three of them are full-time wives and mums with two children. Other five are working outside of their home with kids as an architect and property developer, a C-level employer, a serial entrepreneur, feminist policy maker of a local government. Two of them originally have art majors and art experiences in their 20s. I did not hire the professional artists and art professors preventing from any bias from interests. I also participated in the conversation and activities with them actively. Additionally referenced from other candidates who do not have any art related experiences as a control group for comparing.
At the beginning, I opened this project to the public through my Facebook account, but there are two stumbling blocks there, I recognised. First, the ‘art’ is still expensive to be with and difficult to understand in Korea. As a rapidly developed country, our cultural basis is still developing. I aware well the limit of my research, it brought here only ‘wealthy’ and ‘intelligent’ women who can afford for the art. However, I found it is still useful and meaningful as a start a conversation about my questions.
Second, why only for women? I also know well the stress of being male bodies in Korea. In our society, they are given the huge burden especially for the economic responsibilities. The rising of feminism movement and the severe backlashes recent few years in Korea, we can understand in this aspect. I also tried to open my research without gender limits and to collect men participants, but some of the candidates confessed to me that they are critically afraid of being opened themselves. I could listen some stories of their ageing anxieties along with art invests, but they did not want to be recorded and shared their narratives. So, at this moment, I only focus on the female participants.
• Concluding: As I mentioned above already, my audience was some limit in gender and class aspects. However, with the deep dive into their internal ageing anxieties and self-curing activities, I could understand various scenes and stages of ageing women and confirm the therapeutic impacts of the art activities.
Art related activities, even just looking around the paintings arise the joy of beauty, not surficial but inner beauty. When they visit the museums or galleries with neat outfits, ageing women can away from their home or workplace and think about the artists’ hands who made the pieces with their own perception and efforts for a long time. Paintings also ageing things like their own lives. Some of participants shed tears seeing the making video of the artist who is in his 90s. Artists also deal with the time, not only the materials itself like mums. Mums wait for their children’s growing, like artists waiting for the artworks maturing.
Buying original paintings, print editions, and even posters, postcards, or small magnets can make the buyers their economic leeway. Half of participants already start their art collecting during 40s, and two of them also are learning art investment with historical backgrounds from the experts. They are both not art majored ladies, and the education itself evokes their energy and stamina. One collector conveyed me the gratitude of economic rebirth from the poor family. As an effective symbol of her own economic success, art collecting is also functioning. The other one mentioned ‘Punctum(Roland Barthe)’. Depend on her mention, I found art collecting is answering to own tastes evoked by those Punctum. Art investing is closer to the answering to the some cashable ‘Studium’.
Making art pieces is more direct way of enjoying art and enhance the producers’ self-efficacy. Three of the participants shared their own productions from iPad doodling to the Korean folk art ‘Minhwa’. One of them use her own drawings for the covers of books which her company published. One of the other participants found her daughter’s extra ordinary talents on painting, and share the art experiences each other. The iPad doodler who runs three successful companies was an originally art student in her 20s. She decided to restart her artistic career during this intervention.
Giving births to children, launching companies or services, and making art pieces have the same roots fundamentally. That is the desire for the eternal life, the long-standing longing of human being. Ageing anxieties is not much far from the Dying anxieties. Turning after 40s, the clockworks move fast, and we can recognise the limit. So, I tried to find vivid words from the middle-aged women about the relationships between raising kids, running business, and doing art activities. If the kids are getting ready to fly away, the business is going their own paths, bodies are getting older, parents are returning to their planets, what could be remained with us talking about eternality. Arts. Only arts could do it. And I, the half participant, and half researcher, can embrace my past mistakes and errors and current ageing bodies. And do further artistic exploration with more certitude.
*Bibliography