Artwork Title: A Cry For Help
By: Kamorudeen Aruna
Media: Charcoal, Pencil & Ink on Paper
Year: 2018
Artist Statement
“A cry for help” started in early 2014’ with just a bunch of sketches and a story. The Idea; A self inspired portrait with a clear expression of what mental trauma may feel like.
At first, when I was creating this I didn’t know what any of it meant. All I knew was that, after living through an extremely frightening, emotional and difficult or distressing event, it could result in challenges to functioning or coping normally.
I had pen down what I knew at that time and then realized later on that, for a child the trauma’s could often lead onto a long term series of constant suffering, pain and struggle.
That was how, I ended up creating an emotional piece of this young girl child who had her entire village destroyed by a presumed (war).
While reading through her story, I realized how deep this mental trauma’s could be and after I lost my mom four years before the art was finally completed in 2018, I sort of knew what that felt like”
So, I decided to pen down a reminder prior to finishing the piece;
“We must try to understand how important mental trauma is, especially at a young age and sometimes they can be ”A literal cry for help”
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