Harness Your Creativity: Self Portraiture for Self Discovery

by D'Arcy Benincosa

During the pandemic, when just about everything was taken from us, we were given one opportunity:

We were given the opportunity to see the world differently. To retrain our brains to see beauty in repetition. To see things in a new way. To do more with less. To create with reckless abandon.

And today’s guest on the Play It Brave podcast? She did just that.

Céline Chhuon is a sister of mine–of the “chosen family” variety. She lives the dream as a full time photographer and creative living in Paris, The City of Lights. When France went into lockdown for months last spring and her calendar of bookings was shot, she decided to challenge her boredom in order to rise above it. Her book that resulted from those 54 days, Home Is Where The Art Is, is Céline’s manifesto to the radical act of creation. Listen to today’s episode to hear the story.

Key Takeaways:

70 percent of the world was locked down at the same time! Together, creatives everywhere agreed to make something out of this unexpected, unprecedented moment.
Céline started her 54 day streak of creation out of boredom, despair, and anxiety. Eventually, it turned into a personal challenge. In the beginning, it was just for fun. Eventually, it became a challenge to dig deeper.
Because there was no one else to photograph, she played with self portraiture and elevating found objects around her home.
As humans, we are attuned to being a collective. A community. As lockdowns began across the world due to the coronavirus, so many of us didn’t realize what we had until it was gone. We took the human connection for granted.
In tumultuous times, it can be difficult to make sense of the chaos that’s around us–especially as the world seems to be in turmoil.
It’s important to remember that you can create with anything. Your beautiful brain can be retrained to learn new things. It can be rewired to see anything.
The process of creation is what makes us feel alive. Everyone is inherently creative… Even the act of breathing in and out of your lungs is an act of creation. We have the freedom to create regardless of the circumstances or the job we have.
Creativity aligns our head and our heart.
Our homes can be works of art. I’ve invested so much of myself into making my home art. The lines, the arches, the colors, the curves–my home has been in remodel for three years in pursuit of a certain kind of aesthetic.
Slowly but surely, the universe is shifting toward a healthier place. Lockdown has forced us into this. The protests and global uprising around racial tension and inequality forced us into a collective shift. It’s the reset we all needed and one of the silver linings to come out of all of this.