Masa Hilcisn
Above featured image provided by author
I grew up in war. It shaped my dreams. It shaped my world. It shaped my deepest perspectives about life, people, countries, separations, and identities. It shaped my life path for good. It shaped my deep sense of not belonging, of not wanting to belong to a particular nation state, to a particular flag, hymn, nationality, place. It taught me some of the most valuable life lessons. It taught me that my home is inside of me. It taught me my country is the whole world. It taught me of courage. It taught me of the importance of compassion and love. It taught me that in order to appreciate light in the most profound way I need first to experience darkness. It taught me how to find wisdom in the darkest experiences. It taught me that one of the most profound ways to heal is by producing my own art.
In order to heal, I knew I had to make distance from that physical place that was and still it is so wounded by war.
I carved my way by forming my own voice, protesting for better rights of women and girls, by stepping out from silence, by voicing personal narratives, by addressing violence, by forming my own aesthetic, by writing, by filming, by recording, by dancing, by endless creating.
Living in a space that witnessed mass rape of women and girls during the war, all forms of sexual violence and use of rape as a weapon of war taught me lessons that will keep marking my personal and professional paths. I wanted to understand scope of collective and individual narratives that I belong to. I wanted to understand if there is a way out. I wanted to understand if and how healing can take place. I wanted to understand the power of sharing stories. I wanted to understand my own personal narrative and ways I can share it.
I found art to be among the most profound tools to tell what is internalized, to express what is not so tangible, to address shadows, suffering, and pain, to scream, scratch, dig layers of stories surfacing from mud. I did not have formal education in art besides music in high school. I learned how to create by using my inner voices, guidance, and deep urge for expressing stories and healing what needed to be healed. I learned from fragments of war, I learned from the first bullets shot into my home, I learned from massacres. I learned from bombs being dropped on people and places. I learned from blood on our streets. I learned from funerals behind our building. I learned from fears/anxieties/ facing/death/abyss/endlessness/isolation/loneliness/hunger/shame/threatening/horror/violence/not-belonging…
Image above: This image represents a collage of woman and animal with core wounds but enormous power to heal.
I carved my way by migrating to new worlds both physical and mental, by facing fears and by building my own space in a new country, by allowing myself to be in survival mode, by allowing myself to lose what needed to be lost, by allowing myself to not give up my creative force, by allowing myself to try and experiment with new creative entities. Those entities were personal plains composed from video fragments, documentary elements, real life moments, fractures of daily life, stages and processes of deep personal journeys. They were composed from fears, happiness, anxieties, losses, gains, sufferings, pains, colors, tears, laughter, hugs, mourning, intimacies, birth deliveries. I moved to new places. I moved to the city called Prague that become my new entity of presence, creating, learning, facing, and healing. I’ve been wanting to leave country of my origin, that wounded place, since the age of thirteen. I felt deep down and instinctively that the only way to heal is to make a distance from that wounded place. My new place of living became a new plane to keep learning and creating my own art.
Image above: A photograph of the water that Hilcisin saw on her way to a workshop.
I looked for many answers, and after creating enough physical distance from the physical space which was and still is so traumatized by war, I finally started with establishing a dialogue with an internalized past and the outside world through a visual plane. I used that visual plane to articulate some of my deepest and most painful personal narratives. I used that plane to heal my wounded past. I used that plane to learn the importance of sharing: sharing stories we want and need to share.
The result of that was that I began working on a series of visual narratives constructed through personal images. For the past several years, I have been continuously creating and sharing personal narratives which became the main source of inspiration to develop further visual storytelling work. This work is composed from creating collages, drawings, paintings, singing, performing, filming…creatively expressing personal stories, narratives that we want to share but never did, narratives that we buried deeply inside, narratives that we never had a chance to tell, narratives that we want to heal, narratives that we want to use for the empowerment, narratives that need to be told, narratives that need to be heard.
There was a strong urge to be of service to other women and girls. There was a deep belief that we experience hardship in order to be able to be of service to other communities around the world.
I established my own professional path by drawing inspiration, courage, and wisdom from my own personal pain and by continuous learning from other artists, creators, survivors: all those who are my endless source of inspiration, learning, and support.
Image: From Masa Hilcisin’s collection “Inwards” representing the process of facing herself and her own shadow.
Author’s bio
Masa Hilcisin is an artist and educator. She teaches film production, and visual storytelling, and holds a PhD in Film Studies and Audio-Visual Culture from the Masaryk University. Masa has been involved in many cultural and artistic projects, including film festival curating and various women artists’ support initiatives. She runs World Community Connect, a platform for personal storytelling which serves women and girls in the Czech Republic and abroad.
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