Research Catalogue

About this exposition

Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023, BA Fine Arts This paper aims to research and study how traditional Bulgarian herbal healing and theoretical matter can influence artistic research and wheth- er they can be applied as methods to the artistic practice, guiding it to take a more self-sustainable form. Herbal medicinal plants have been applied to the daily lives of generations upon generations of humans, as tools to aid and better one’s health, as well as symbols in ritual practices across the globe. In this paper I am contextualizing herbal medicine within the scope of the contemporary artistic prac- tice, through decomposing the process of using herbal medicine into three key steps: gathering, combining and ingesting. I apply art theory based on these topics, to compare the herbal and artistic worlds, using the symbolic, metaphorical aspect of herbal healing while keeping the logic behind it. Through this process, I aim at making a connection that strengthens the notion of the artistic practice both as a medicinal, as well as a deeply self-centric and self-sufficient practice.

type	research exposition
keywords	herbal, herbalism, gathering, hoarding, archive, recipes, ingestion, artistic practice, digestion, bulgaria
date	28/06/2023
last modified	28/06/2023
status	in progress
share status	public
affiliation	Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
copyright	Maria Ilieva
license	All rights reserved
language	English
url	https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2220308/2220307

an international database for artistic research

Herbal Practice: A Symbolic Approach to Artistic Medicine (or, The Artistic Practice as Regurgitating Findings) (last edited: 2023)