Barbara Bickel

Introduction

"In aesthetical working-through the artist transforms time and space of an encounterevent into matrixial screen and gaze, and offers the other via com-passionate hospitality an occasion for fascinance." -- Bracha L. Ettinger,                                                           

I understand and experience art making to be a co-relational and performative ritual act. My art and inquiry projects to date have focused on socially-engaged art as public pedagogy, collaboration, and restorative and transformative learning. I have a particular interest in how embodied relationships with others, the environment and our selves, are represented, performed and understood in society. In many of these projects, I have worked with artists from diverse disciplines (i.e. dance, theatre, visual arts, creative writing, music), and with community members of all ages.

 

The past, present and future of my artworkings are devoted to understanding art and writing as an embodiment of sharable co-encounter events that hold possibilities for individual, cultural, ancestral and environmental re-attunement, critical inquiry, healing and transformation.  


Barbara Bickel, 2024                                            

                                                                      

Exhibitions, Screenings & Books


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Bearing Bloodlines: Ancestral Invocations

A collaborative ritual performance project with Tannis Hugill. Premier screenings will take place in early November 2024. Learn more here.

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New 2023 Book

Art-Care Practices for Restoring the Communal: Education, Co-Inquiry and Healing

Co-authored by Barbara Bickel & R. Michael Fisher


Published by Routledge

Avian Ancestress at foot of spruce tree


        the tenacity     of

                               dropping

    to

      ones’ knees

     in

     attendance to

            other



Performative ritual enactment with raw clay figurine as part of a Creation Research project. Barbara Bickel, photograph fall 2020


On-Going Artworkings

   Art, Ritual and Trance Inquiry Book Blog

   a place for sharing events, conversations and teachings based
   on the book

   Parallel Recordings

   with R. Michael Fisher

  Studio M*

   a research creation lab intersecting arts, culture & healing

   with R. Michael Fisher

   Ma Poses

   with the Gestare Art Collective 2015

   Nap-Ins

   a community-engaged art project with the Gestare
   Art 
Collective 2011-

  Nomadic Inquiry Blog

   Explorations of art, place and relationality  2015-2019


ART PORTFOLIO

Bearing Bloodlines
Ancestral Invocations
2018-

collaboration with Tannis Hugill

   
Skin of the Earth
 2015-

Raw Energy
2020-
Metramorphosis
ongoing since 2011

  Oracular Re-Encounters 
2015
-2017  

Arts-Based Residencies/Labs 2013- 

Gestare Art Collective
2010-     


              Ancestral Journeys

                     2011-12
  

          Oracular Co-Encounter
                       2011 

Womb Walks
2011-2018 

Wit(h)nessing Eyes Close(d)
   
2009-10    

 
 

              Tracing Absence
            Sounding Presence
                      2009
 

                     

                     PhD Art
                  2004-2008
 

                      MA Art
                   2002-2004
 

                     Early Art
                   1992-2002
 

   Student's Art 2010- 



Copyright Barbara Bickel 2024