Safe Place

In this project Mara Palena visually explores all the protocol’s phases of the EMDR therapy - "Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing" - through video installations and photographic images that crystallize incisive passages.

In the image presented here, the second phase of the therapeutic protocol is explored. The patient is asked to identify a place where the person has experienced a feeling of well-being and relaxation. This place is considered as a safe place to find shelter during the reworking of the trauma, when the emotions connected to it can take over. The goal of the project is to promote the exploration of EMDR, supporting various scientific research that affirms the effectiveness of this therapy in the treatment of psychological problems, such as phobias, dyspareunia, depression, anxiety and eating disorders.

The artist lays bare the most intimate psychic mechanisms of her unconscious that emerged during EMDR therapy, without neglecting the traumatic events of her experience. All the emotional stages of the journey are retraced together. Mara Palena reprocesses her individual experience to open it to a collective feeling, with the aim of sensitising the other towards help therapies. Some of the archival material used comes from the public library of The Prelinger Archives, San Francisco.