School of Creative
Industries
Choi Young Jin Suzan
Young Jin’s pursuit of art through a self-reflective and therapeutic lens led her to the MA Art Therapy programme, where she could further hone her interest in psychology and art.
With a linguistic and cultural background in Korean, Chinese and English, she worked as a language teacher and interpreter/translator. Young Jin has also served as a missionary journeying with the poor in slums, prisons and survivors of human trafficking. There, she saw first-hand how art could be used as a voice for those without.
As part of her clinical training, Young Jin provided therapeutic care to geriatric patients undergoing rehabilitation at a community hospital, as well as to paediatric patients and their caregivers in an acute hospital setting. She hopes to offer a safe holding space for those experiencing psycho-emotional issues from illness, trauma, grief, relational conflicts and mental health problems, helping them find healing and wholeness in their lives; if not through words, then through art.
Work
Textile Canvas: the fullness of the void
Korean ramie fabric
70 x 70 cm
2023
Textile art stretches back generations and is associated with rich personal and collective narratives. Created by repeated weaving of fibers to form an interconnected structure, textile is also reflective of the complex relational reality in which we live.
This artwork explores both Young Jin’s personal and professional identity through the use of Korean ramie fabric, a textile that in Korean culture, accompanies a person from birth to death; and the symbolism of a blank canvas, that while seemingly empty, is in truth, a powerful seed-bed for both unspoken narrative and unlimited creativity. This concept, known in Korean as 여백 (yeo-baek), presents empty spaces as an elevated realm of art that considers the empty ‘void’ as an impregnated full-ness, filled with waiting and hope for a relational encounter of the self and the other in the therapeutic space.
Thesis abstract
Attachment informed dyadic medical art therapy for mother-child with paediatric stroke: A qualitative single case study in Singapore
This thesis explores the therapeutic impact of an attachment informed dyadic art therapy for a mother and child with paediatric stroke in an acute hospital in Singapore. It studies the case of a paediatric patient diagnosed with left hemispheric stroke, complicated by right-sided weakness of her limbs as well as psycho-emotional regression due to her illness, and explores how an attachment informed therapeutic intervention can help facilitate a secure base for this young patient so as to meet her multi-dimensional needs, and provide a holding place and support for the mother as her caregiver. The client first presented as being in a symbiotic and dependent relationship with her mother. However, in a safe therapeutic holding space, where the pair could experience attunement and growing awareness of acceptance, the young patient was able to venture out and show signs of healthy individuation and separation from her mother, while her mother could meet her own psycho-emotional needs through artmaking. In addition, through facilitation from the art therapist trainee, the pair were able to use joint attention and encounter in art therapy to strengthen their emotional bond and facilitate the communication of feelings, desires, identity and shared memories. This increased the dyad’s awareness and care of self and the other; and built upon the internal representation and needs of the adolescent patient, further aiding in the child’s (and mother’s) holistic rehabilitation and long-term development.
In summary, this qualitative research paper examines, through a psychodynamic art therapy lens, how attachment informed medical art therapy can provide a supportive foundation and sense of safety within the intersubjective relationship with the art therapist trainee, to achieve holistic and therapeutic healing for a mother and child with functional, cognitive and psycho-emotional limitations from her illness.