(EN) Poetic Clouds: An Embodied Experience Hybrid Art Fair, 2026, Madrid
- seren ilkdogan
- 6 days ago
- 8 min read
A Reflexive Writing on Artistic Process
Seren P. İlkdoğan
This text is an attempt to approach a creative process—of which I was both the artist and a witness—from a reflexive position, grounded in the practice and theory of Expressive Arts. At the same time, it seeks to open a space where I can share, with sincerity, the sensory, relational, and imaginal layers I experienced throughout the process.
In this sense, what is offered here is not only a conceptual framing of an exhibition, but also an unfolding of encounters, transformations, and meanings that emerged from within the process itself.
In Expressive Arts, aesthetic analysis and harvesting are not limited to evaluating the final artistic product. Rather, they involve carefully attending to, tracing, and making visible the meanings that emerge from within the process. Knowledge, in this approach, is not something extracted through external analysis; instead, it gradually reveals itself through embodied and relational encounters within the act of creation.
Aesthetic analysis, therefore, becomes a reflexive practice of following the inherent knowledge of experience, while harvesting involves gathering the images, sensations, and layers of meaning that arise along the way with a sensitive and attentive awareness.
Poiesis, Decentering, and the Emergence of Form
Throughout the Poetic Clouds exhibition process, particularly in moments of decentering—a concept frequently addressed in Expressive Arts—the artistic practice itself began to unfold as a creative process operating within poiesis.
As Stephen K. Levine describes, poiesis is not merely about producing something; it is about creating space for what has not yet taken form, what remains unseen and unspoken, to emerge within the process of creation. In this sense, poiesis is not a concept applied retrospectively, but a mode of being that is lived through the body and through relational engagement within the process itself.
This understanding resonates deeply with Martin Heidegger’s notion of aletheia, or “unconcealment.” For Heidegger, creation is not simply the production of an object, but the moment in which being reveals itself. The artwork is not a representation, but a site of emergence—a threshold where something comes into presence for the first time.
Poiesis unfolds precisely within this threshold, and the artist becomes both the carrier and the witness of this process of revealing.
Cloud as an Imaginal Encounter
The cloud, as the point of departure for this work, cannot be grasped as an a posteriori object of experience. One cannot stand on it, lie upon it, or touch it physically. Yet the moment we imagine standing on a cloud, the body begins to respond to this imagined experience.
Experience, therefore, is not formed solely through physical contact, but also through the imaginal field opened by perception.
Within this openness, we turned toward exploring how clouds activate the imagination. Each shifting form evoked different resonances within the subjective field, and these resonances began to travel across different artistic modalities—moving from poetry to movement, from sound to visual form—each embarking on its own journey of meaning.
Cloud as an Imaginal Encounter
Throughout the process, Andrea in Zürich and I in Barcelona—situated in two different geographies—turned our gaze toward the sky, much like two observers contemplating the same artwork from different perspectives. For nearly six months, we sustained this practice without attempting to interpret, analyze, or define what we were seeing. Instead, we allowed it to remain as a lived experience, sharing photographs of clouds with one another.
Each image became a portal into a new way of seeing.
Andrea’s poem Cloud Strategy articulated a space of pause—of non-doing—within the speed, demands, and fatigue of everyday life. It offered a strategy of breathing through clouds. My response to the poem emerged through movement—a danced, aesthetic response that revealed the tension between my internal sense of time and the rhythm of the external world.
…And when it becomes uneven,
and stony, then
I look up to the sky
where the next cloud
is in the making
my home
in the river of clouds
Cloud Strategy, Andrea Grieder
To remain suspended in time… Between the ephemeral nature of the cloud—its appearing and dissolving—and the human longing for permanence, I found myself pausing within the cave of the body, which holds the process of becoming. This space opened as an inner chamber—one that carries, contains, and transforms.
As the question emerged of how this experience would take form within the exhibition space in Madrid, Andrea introduced the idea of “stitching the process together.” We envisioned inviting the viewer to lie down within the space, to encounter the poetry and movement installation, and to drift into their own cloud-world.
We felt that the entire space needed to be composed of organic and natural materials. Using cotton ribbons, we began stitching both our individual cloud experiences and the associations that emerged from our shared process.
Sewing, weaving, and stitching are practices deeply rooted in my cultural memory. Often, they appear as acts of repair: mending a child’s torn garment, preparing a dress for an occasion, fixing a costume or a button. To repair something for another is, in itself, an act of care and connection.
Within this process, traces of my family and ancestry began to surface. Knowing that my grandmother sustained her life through tailoring, I felt as if new threads of connection were being woven between us as I looked at the clouds. It was as if different layers of time were touching—one life passing its traces into another. With the life growing within me, I sensed a quiet continuity, a lineage unfolding.
Art had activated the memory of the body—and the story continued to grow, branching into new directions.
In Expressive Arts, the response of the material itself carries meaning. Each time I rushed, each time I became entangled in urgency, the threads knotted. And each time, I realized that undoing a knot took far longer than stitching a word.
In these moments, my relationship to time—my tendency to rush, to become caught between past and future—became visible. Yet when I trusted the process and allowed myself to surrender, my fingers began to move like water flowing through a stream.
Andrea did not know my words, and I did not know hers. We shared reflections on the process, yet we remained with the uncertainty of how the ribbons would eventually find their place in the space. This uncertainty often brought anxiety, yet we allowed the work to reveal itself in its own time.
Whenever I tried to control the process or overthink it, the installation refused to take shape.
Installation Process
Before entering the space, Andrea and I visited a flower shop. The branches we chose belonged to a cedar tree; yet it was also the week when cherry blossoms first began to bloom. Each time I encounter these blossoms, I feel a gentle warmth and joy—something that quietly accompanied our selection.
We sensed that only a tree branch could hold the weight of the ribbons’ stories.
We unfolded each ribbon as if opening a gift, sharing their meanings and the feelings they evoked. The ribbons then found their own place along the branches.
What initially appeared as three separate paths gradually revealed a shared narrative. Words that seemed coincidental began to cluster, generating new layers of meaning.
For four days, we spent long hours in the room. The shifting light and shadows throughout the day continuously transformed the installation—like clouds, constantly giving birth to new forms.
We placed raw sheep wool—brought from Switzerland—onto the bed. Its scent, texture, and presence became almost the flesh of the work.
And of course, play found its way in. Andrea’s dog Lisa’s toy sheep, from Saas Fee, found its place on the bed like a child’s companion.
Viewer Experience
Over four days, approximately four thousand visitors entered the space. Their initial reactions—surprise, curiosity—were striking.
“I want to lie down.”
“I want to jump in.”
When invited to touch, the excitement in their bodies became visible.
Children, in particular, returned repeatedly, bringing their families back into the space, engaging with the installation in playful and fluid ways.
Across all ages, visitors shared a quiet, joyful recognition—a reconnection with something childlike within themselves.
When asked, before hearing the story, “What do you see?” the answer was often the same:
“A cloud.”
To engage with the work, they had to move—approach, withdraw, bend, look up. The living body became part of the process.
Each visitor left with a word, an image, or a feeling that stayed with them.
Collective Digital Collage
We invited the Curative Arts community to look toward the sky with the artists' intention of co-creation.
We asked participants to photograph their experiences of the clouds; however, what we gathered was far more than mere imagery. Each frame carried the trace of an individual’s unique relationship with the world at that specific moment.
By converging these diverse testimonies—all directed at the same sky—into a unified digital collage, we created more than a visual compilation.
This work became an expression of the space generated by the act of "looking together." It represents the transformation of perceptions, filtered through different eyes, into a collective sensation.
Perhaps this study serves as a reminder: when the same theme is processed through various minds, it can give rise to a new perspective that no single individual could perceive alone.
Ongoing Layers of Meaning
Even now, as I reflect and write, new layers continue to emerge.
My attention began to shift toward the points where the branches intersected—the places where Andrea’s and my stories intertwined. These became the meaningful nodes of the work.
As I focused on these intersections, I began to work with the words that appeared at these points.
After all, coincidences are the moments when synchronicity reveals its hidden patterns.
Drops of Sadness
Invisible Thread
Calm Gentle Curious Gaze
Wu-Wei Cirropoeticus
A Cloudy Uproar
A Rabbit is a Cloud
Sky Gambling
These words formed clusters—knots that held the narrative together.
In Expressive Arts, we value the unexpected within the process of poiesis. These moments point toward the new, the unforeseen—toward what lies beyond the limits of conscious control.
One of the most surprising moments occurred when a ribbon moved from one branch to another. We do not know how it happened—perhaps it belongs to the mysterious intelligence of clouds.
Yet through this shift, new poetic constellations emerged:
The rabbit touches the Lion
Spirits of the Mountains
Gratitude
Gaze
Time Illusion
These words continue to unfold, opening into new layers of meaning.
The Cloud Strategy
When life is hard
The pressure is too much
I'm an icicle
Instead of flowing
Then I take a short break
Where?
On a cloud.
Surrounded by a downpour
Enveloped in white mist
I am soft and nebulous
I am a cloud
blurred and unclear
I am a cirrostratus
cumulonimbus
I am an altocumulus
depending on how I feel
Far from everything
The ground of reality
Like a blurred patch
The worries look questioningly at the sky
The pile of work lies flat on the ground
It’s indecipherable from above
If the deadline has already passed
A few raindrops
help
to obscure the facts
The requirements seem tiny
The opponent a small dot
In the hills of reason
I am a cloud
Gliding weightlessly in the sea of clouds
Fluidly transforming
Formless, the latest trend
Order emerges from movement
Dullness forms into silence
I am a cloud
Gliding weightlessly in a sea of clouds
Fluidly transforming
Formless, the latest trend
Order emerges from movement
Dullness forms into stillness
I take my time
I am a cloud
Let myself drift
With the wind
The light tickles me
On these days
Penetrates through the white of the clouds
The haze dissolves
Slowly
Shapes emerge
Clarity re-emerges
The ground
seems passable again
The clarity in the air
The facts see my face
The steps light
in transformation
And when it becomes uneven,
and stony,
then I look up
to the sky
where the next cloud
is in the making
my home
in the river of clouds
Andrea Grieder
