School of Creative
Industries
Prarthna Agarwal
Prarthna embarked on her MA Art Therapy training to interweave her passion for psychology and the creative arts with the knowledge and experience gained from her BA in Psychology training in Mumbai, India.
Prarthna is a versatile multimedia artist and humbly embraces the boundless potential of creative materials and experiential processes within art-making. These processes accentuate a sensorial and immersive experience as she explores the inner and outer worlds from her own creative expression and from her clients’ growth and strengths.
Through several internships with non-profit organisations and volunteering experience in a school setting, she found meaningful fulfilment in engaging with individuals from all ages and walks of life. This rich two-year journey in art therapy has been a rewarding and transformative experience for Prarthna, with the skills and experiences she cultivated honing both her personal and professional identities.
Work
Opening the doors of the inner sanctum
Mixed media installation
40 x 60 cm each
2023
The artist humbly invites viewers to her inner sanctum, a series of pods embraced by a soft membrane of botanical recollections that cocoon the viewer with a spectrum of colour in an immersive sensorium.
The limitless possibilities of combining, creating and evolving a multitude of elements deeply intrigued the artist's creative process, leading her to reflect on the dichotomies of our conscious and unconscious ecosystems.
Each pod is a significant archetype that warmly unveils interconnections of the artist's inner and outer self while evoking divergent sensations of seeing, sensing, breathing, hearing, discovering, and eventually embracing. The botanical cascade offers a space for releasing one’s own echoes through tactile interaction and introspection while journeying through the transcendence of the inner and outer worlds.
Individually conceived, this sentient composition transpires the dichotomies of origins: visible and invisible, spiritual and physical in a euphonious space where reflection takes precedence.
Thesis abstract
Art psychotherapy with individuals from the adult service industry in Singapore: A qualitative inquiry using a multiple-case vignette
This thesis is a reflective, practitioner-based inquiry into the use of art psychotherapy to engage individuals from the adult service industry in Singapore. It advocates for an intersectional, inclusive, and holistic trauma-informed lens that is increasingly critical in places where art psychotherapy is seeking its niche, especially in Asia. This involves humanistic considerations for social well-being in the evolving therapeutic alliance and multi-layered approaches that are sensitive and inclusive of gender diversity and culture. Through multiple case vignettes, the expressions of trauma followed by impactful adversities were explored and will be illustrated in the paper. This led to the exploration of post-traumatic growth and the strength-based, healing properties of the creative arts, which transpired the emergence of the creative voice and healing in the therapeutic space.