Yanna Marie Orcel selected for RCA BLK’s first artist residency

Masters of Research in Fine Arts & Humanities student Yanna Marie Orcel has recently been selected for a number of exciting opportunities.

Orcel’s ‘larger-than-life postcard’, “Tethered Triggers” (2022), will be featured in the upcoming art exhibition, “Inside Out” at Core Arts Gallery. This is a collaborative group exhibition with Royal College of Art (RCA) and Core Art students celebrating Mental Health Awareness Week. The private viewing is on May 15, from 6:00-9:30pm, with the exhibition concluding on May 19 2023.

Additionally, the artist has been selected to attend RCA BLK’s (Royal College of Art Black Students and Alumni) first artist residency. This artist residency is research-based; the three artists attending will research the land and local area of Romney Marsh, and will later create artwork to go on exhibition nearby. This fully funded artist residency is a collaboration between RCA BLK and Art in Romney Marsh.

The artist has also been selected to take part in the online Museum Education Practicum course run by Studio Museum in Harlem. This online practicum course runs from May to July, and provides participants with: “(1) an Opportunity to be a part of the next generation of scholars and educators, (2) Experience building art-based curriculum, (3) Teaching experience based on inquiry-driven museum education models, (4) Access to museum professionals, leading curators, scholars, and academics, and (5) Opportunity to earn academic credit”.

Orcel has been chosen to run a Half-Day Advanced Practice Course at this year’s 54th Annual American Art Therapy Association Conference; taking place in San Diego, California from October 25th to 29th. During the half day session, titled “Creative Care: Practice-Based Research on Therapeutic Art Sessions for the Black Community”, Orcel will present the findings and case studies from her research at RCA then facilitate a Creative Care session for attendees to participate in.

Earlier in 2023, the artist researcher ran two 6-session workshops as part of her practice-based research at Royal College of Art. Her workshops, titled “Creative Care” each include Black art history/education, meditation, art making, and group discussion. Her Creative Care workshop which ran at Battersea Campus throughout the month of March was open to RCA BLK students. The curriculum for the workshop sessions was developed in response to the 18 survey results from a survey conducted during term 1. The topics for each of the workshop sessions were: (1) Healing & Fostering Communal Care, (2) Black & Self Identity, (3) Taking Up Space Unapologetically, (4) Black Joy & Love, and (5) Mental Health & Nature. Session 4: Black Joy & Love ran on two occasions to provide more participants with the opportunity to engage. The art materials used throughout the workshop series included oil pastels, magazine (for collage), acrylic paint, cardboard, paper, markers, pencils, yarn, tissue paper, and charcoal. The aims of the workshop included creating a greater sense of community among Black RCA students and to provide participants with new modes of creative expression to better understand themselves, express themselves, and emotionally regulate.

The online Creative Care workshop was run as part of Clemmons Family Farm’s 2023 Black & Bliss program. The first session of the online Creative Care sessions was allocated to addressing the Biracial-Black identity; through group discussion and art making. The following five sessions curriculum was created in response to the seven psychological benefits of art, listed in Alain de Botton and John Armstrong’s 2013 book “Art as Therapy”. The researcher examined the psychological benefits of art making and examination through a Black lens throughout this workshop’s run. The seven psychological benefits of art elaborated on were: (1) remembering, (2) hope, (3) sorrow, (4) rebalancing, (5) self-understanding, (6) growth, and (7) appreciation. The participants that attended the online sessions were (adult) African Americans. Throughout both of the workshops run, the facilitator/researcher received 1:1 supervision from licensed art psychotherapist Samantha Hunt, at the London Art Therapy Centre. Throughout the 10 hours of supervision, the researcher received insight, reflected, created, and held space for her emotions in response to the Creative Care sessions.

Yanna Marie Orcel is an African American collage artist, painter, sculptor, performer, writer, activist, and community organizer whose work focuses on representations of the Black community. Her background in art therapy informs her practice-based research and her approach to creating. Her work plays on the juxtaposition of being both triggering and healing; aggressive and caring; vibrant and dark. The artist currently resides in London where she researches the impact of creatively caring for people of the African diaspora through Black art history, group meditation, art making, and listening, at the Royal College of Art.

To learn more about Yanna Marie Orcel’s practice, artwork, and research, visit her website and/or follow her on Instagram.

Website: www.yannamarieorcel.com

Instagram: @Yannas_ArtStudio