- Psychocism By Khalid Chrisinas
Psychocism is a term denoting my own perception of the world as a reconstruction of the
past, the present and the future. It includes the use of two entities figuratively called “players”
that act out my interpretation of the microcosm of phychocism. They are The Sun and The
Moon. The Sun standing for Greece expresses the warmth of my surroundings back home in
Greece and The Moon denotes Egypt. As Donald Judd so eloquently put it: The only instance in
which the past is more than usually relevant to the present is when the continuity is very strong,
bringing the past to the present; these “players” both signify elements deeply rooted in my own
past and have profoundly shaped my present .
Born in an Egyptian family that lived in Athens, Greece, I was practically raised by a Greek
couple. The case of my upbringing is peculiar as I grew up with two sets of parents under the
Greek sun until the age of 10 when I was forced to move back to Alexandria, Egypt with one of
them. In the midst of the Arab Spring and the consequent home-imprisonment, the pain of the
separation from what I called family competed with an intense feeling of fear that death loomed
in every corner.
The only escape was drawing.
I would often remember what my Mom had once told me when she came to secretly visit me.
Whenever you are sad, look at the moon and know that everything will be alright because a new
day is coming. I kept on looking. Thinking about her words made me happy. It was the
magnificence of her unconditional love that kept me going, giving me the strength to keep on
drawing although I was constantly scorned for it in my new “home” . This parental love brought
The Sun from Greece back to me and allowed me to feel warmth despite the grey reality of my
present.
The intertwining of my two worlds led me to channel my emotions into a bright-coloured
expression by use of markers, acrylic paints and Indian ink. The Sun and The Moon would
resurface over and over again, almost obsessively playing leading roles in my works as I tried to
explore their influence on my perception of my surroundings and thus the creation of
psychocism. They are two constants in perpetual contradiction that dominate / rule in my world
of psychocism through their actual consistency by natural interchange in everyday life. These
main characters, The Sun and The Moon, although sometimes unnoticed in the haste of our
daily routines, sit on the throne of the external reality I express through my drawings.
The cosmos in which these “players” exist, is telling of an interplay between dream-like states
and infinite potential versions of reality. Similar to concepts Surrealism struggled with, this
cosmos strives to dissect and rearrange remnants of my past that surface through the lens of
my present state. There is always a story within a story as I encounter different people, listen to
their stories and incorporate moments of significance into that cosmos. What once was strictly
personal lends itself to the communal. The emotional rape that I felt was prevalent in my years
of living between two (warzones) Alexandria and Paris during Bataclan saw its way through a
psychedelic aesthetic, mixing monochrome and bright colours. The past is the monochrome
whereas the present and the future, the polychromes. I often link the moon to monochromatic
emotional expression.
Meanwhile, I draw a fresh explosion coming out of the rays of the Greek sun.
I draw shapes,
dimensions, a void or not, bright colours, some are more elaborate details
which create visual illusions that make the background stand out in the eye of the viewer; units
of small universes within the stories of my central characters. I simply draw.
This urgent need for an outlet of which many have spoken before me, I believe is best
expressed by Julia Kiseleva when she says: If something maternal happens to bear upon the
uncertainty that I call abjection, it illuminates the literary scription of the essence of the essential
struggle that a writer (man or woman) has to engage in with what he calls demonic only to call
attention to it as the inseparable obverse of his very being, of the other (sex) that torments and
possesses him. Does one write under any other condition than being possessed by abjection, in
an infinite catharsis? In an attempt to face my “abjection” to break down the boundaries
between the self and the other, I hold a brush, not a pen and hope to find a voice.
Ironically enough, before reading Kriseleva’s essay, Catharsis is the title I used for my last
series of paintings. After spending hundreds of hours each week on creating my microcosms I
step back from psychocism, and turning to a fresh canvas, breaking the perfectionism of the
structure I cleanse my mind by exploring juxtaposing art. Unlike the almost perfect
ornamentations of psychosism, my escape pieces by the name of Catharsis aim to be abstract
and unplanned. Two colors are used, red for the blood that rains in my veins (thus needs to be
cleaned) and black to mirror the abjection which psychosism often holds dear. Right before
feeling relieved from all my tensions I decide to cut pieces of my canvas in order to release
possible last tensions.