IF YOUR ADVOCACY WERE ART, WOULD IT DEFINE THE FRAME OR WOULD YOU FRAME IT?
The only book related to art I’ve found in the cottage I’m currently staying in is no ordinary collection of works.
It is Surrounded by Art – The Julius Bär Art Collection, which tells an uncommon art story of one of Switzerland’s oldest banks, Julius Bär Group Ltd, a private banking corporation dating back to 1890.
The firm’s original founders and partners were art lovers to begin with, and several members of the Bär family who were directly involved in the business were active sculptors. Contemporary artists became part of the family’s circle of friends. And as the bank’s premises grew, so did the collection of artworks purchased to inhabit and adorn those spaces.
In 1981, an art committee was established with the aim of promoting young, emerging artists in Switzerland.
Raymond J. Bär, grandson of one of the family’s sculptors, writes in the foreword that having such an impressive and diverse collection present in the workplace “has a stimulating effect on staff”.
When there is a sincere intention—and I believe true passion knows no other—the result is harmonious and, in a way, self-perpetuating in its honesty. It allows growth through honest questions and honest responses.
I know. Plenty of corporations purchase art. There is nothing particularly unusual about that.
In most cases, however, the art has to fit within pre-set PR frames.
Plenty of corporations and organisations have also been engaging in creating workplaces that embrace neurodiversity. Here, too, the frames are often predetermined:
Make it look as if we care. And make it look good.
Nothing can stick out beyond the frame.
Only experts’ opinions, so that no politically incorrect scandal stains the canvases we have invested in.
But every art movement in history has, at some point, broken through the standards of appropriateness that came before it.
Often, it happened through a scandal.
A scandal happens when honest (com)passion—the language of the heart—liberates itself from a frame. It chooses to be a masterpiece rather than a decoration.
A mere decoration always seems somewhat uncomfortable around art, because it has no intentional depth and stirs no conversations. Its purpose is to appear pleasing within its surroundings.
And eventually, it gets dumped along with the trend that sustained it.
So, if your advocacy were art, would it exhibit itself in an agreeably appropriate manner and form?
Or would it stimulate precisely because of its inadequately raw, frameless presence?
If you look at the work of Balthasar Burkhard, especially his series depicting individual human parts, you might find that the understandable fear of being in conflict begins to dissipate—at least a little.
Burkhard is one of the artists featured in Surrounded by Art. His work reminds me that allowing our intention to determine the frame is not the same as having no frame at all.
It means allowing our flow to flow.
To intuitively navigate towards the angles that are in harmony with whatever—or whoever—we encounter.
And this brings me to a choice I find particularly difficult.
We can try to force the other person’s frame out of the equation.
Or we can allow natural curiosity and compassion to guide us through the interaction.
In the first case, we become just like the framing one.
We believe ourselves to be frameless and therefore all-encompassing, while simultaneously imposing our own frame of beliefs.
Standing for everything that exists beyond rigid frames, while cancelling everything that happens to exist within them.
This is where I catch myself more often than I would love to.
With the latter choice, compassion and curiosity will naturally head towards the meeting point between different perspectives.
Because these are tools of co-creation.
And if there is no meeting point, perhaps these intuitive powers will eventually tell us to move on with grace.
Because can an honest intention of the heart really afford to waste its time on self-righteousness when there are infinitely many other possibilities for co-creation?
Here, we remain honestly frameless not by rejecting the frames around us, but by accepting them with love.
This is where I would love to catch myself more often.
And this is what I wish for Neurodivergence Gallery.
Not an organisation that has simply found the right frame.
Not advocacy that looks good because it fits comfortably within the frame.
But something alive enough to encounter what is outside our own frame—and curious and compassionate enough to meet it there.
And just as I wanted to leave it there, another thread appeared:
What is the difference between a frame, as I have presented it here, and a boundary of space?
No.
I’m leaving it here for now.
Thank you for coming by.
Yours,
Marta Styczeń
P.S. If you would like to collaborate in any way, please email us at neurodivergence.gallery@gmail.com.