At this event, Temple University partnered with Sensi Holistic Creative Agency to host an art therapy night. I really enjoyed the experience and loved meeting people from the agency, locals from around Rome, and other Temple University interns.
The night started with an activity where we were given twenty minutes to create a collage that represented our identity. We were provided with magazines, paint, and other materials, and Alina, the founder of Sensi, encouraged us to follow our instincts and not worry about the aesthetics. She reminded us that we didn’t need to make a “perfect” artwork, but just something that felt right to us.
I wasn’t sure how to start at first. My identity feels complex and made up of many factors including my cultural background, interests, and experiences. I took Alina’s advice and found photos that spoke to me in the moment. I cut out a picture of a city to represent Philadelphia, a museum to reflect my love of art and museum visits, a photo of friends lying down to symbolize the freedom I feel around my own friends, and a forest to represent my love of nature. For the background, I tore out book pages to represent my love for literature.
As I added these pieces to my collage, I realized it didn’t fully capture all sides of me. There is also a more adventurous, sometimes chaotic part of my personality that finds beauty in chaos. To reflect this, I added photos of art pieces that reflected this and painted a traditional Indian mehendi design over it to show both my interest in creating art and my Indian heritage. I taped both of these sides together to represent how these different parts of me intersect in everyday life.
This activity helped me reconnect with parts of myself that I don’t always notice. It reminded me of my passions and the things that truly matter to me. I was able to create a piece that felt authentically me even in such a short amount of time.
My favorite part of the night was hearing about the choices others made in their artwork. The group was very diverse, with people from different backgrounds and experiences, speaking different languages, and each piece was unique and meaningful to them. I was able to see sides of people I wouldn’t have discovered through a simple introduction through their artworks. While we were all simply in Rome at the same event, our stories intersected in surprising ways, with some shared themes and interests in the collages. At the end of the night, we pinned all of our artworks to a corkboard and connected them with string, to symbolize the bond we formed through this experience.
Overall, this was a fun and meaningful evening where I explored my own identity and also learned from others. I highly recommend checking out Sensi’s website to learn more about their mission: Sensi Holistic Creative Agency