Course Contexts
Inner Child
Niki de Saint Phalle & Yayoi Kusama at Opera Gallery London
I recently visited the exhibition “Inner Child” at Opera Gallery in London. It brought together two artists, Niki de Saint Phalle and Yayoi Kusama, whose art delves into the corners of childhood, trauma, and healing. It featured 41 works - 7 paintings and 34 sculptures - the exhibition revealed how both artists channel their inner child to confront and transform personal experiences into vibrant and playful worlds.
What really grabbed my attention was the central piece in the show which was de Saint Phalle's Last Night I Had a Dream (1968) wall installation. It consisted of 18 painted polyester sculptures. It evoked this dreamlike realm of whimsical creatures that reflected the artist's practice of turning childhood trauma into playful forms. As de Saint Phalle once said, "I transformed my childhood pain into something magical. My monsters became my friends, my fears became my work". Her use of bold, rich colors and whimsical forms was a release, a personal anguish that was transformed into public joy. I really related to that. The creation of art to heal.
Also, the exhibition includes Kusama’s works from the Infinity Nets series, as well as the sculpture Starry Pumpkin (2016). Her recurring dot imagery and immersive motifs are a result of hallucinations from her childhood, which she has described as both terrifying and inspirational. With compulsive repetition and intense color, she constructs spaces that are both meditative and disorienting, drawing viewers into her unique psychological landscape.
These two artists use their art to go back and reclaim pieces of their own childhood. It serves as a road to recovery, allowing them to process trauma from the past and bring others along with them.
Inner Child beautifully resonated with my own practice, which aims to reach the inner child through art. The show reinforced the idea that working with child-like motifs and processes was not only something nostalgic, but, instead, an immersive way of emotional exploration and healing. It reinforced the fact that art has the power to serve as a bridge between the past and the present, pain and joy, the personal and the universal.
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Ref: Opera Gallery (2025). Press Release: Niki de Saint Phalle & Yayoi Kusama – Inner Child. Available at: https://upmag.com/press-release-niki-de-saint-phalle-yayoi-kusama-inner-child/ [Accessed 12 May 2025].UpMag
It Didn’t Start You
by Mark Wolynn – Understanding Family Constellation Therapy
Mark Wolynn's It Didn't Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle (2016) shows the framework for understanding what Family Constellation Therapy is which is a therapy developed by Bert Hellinger. The book basically extends on Hellinger's ideas through epigenetics, psychology, and somatic therapy to a simple language for what many people experience as "invisible burdens" passed on through family traumas.
Family Constellation Therapy is based on the idea that everyone subconsciously carries these unresolved emotional experiences of their ancestors, not through learned behavior, but through inherited trauma in our nervous systems. In the book, Wolynn explains how we can have symptoms of anxiety, depression, or chronic conflict without realizing or understanding its origins. Through this method, it is possible to map one's family structure onto physical space and symbolic position to reveal patterns of entanglements, loss, or broken bonds.
Wolynn writes "What lives in our bodies may not have started with us—but it is ours to carry, and ours to heal" (Wolynn, 2016, p. 64). That is one of the key concepts of Family Constellation Therapy: that healing is not only about revealing our personal wounds, but also about acknowledging and honoring intergenerational pain. The therapeutic process includes "placing" family members in a physical arrangement to reveal hidden dynamics and then facilitate emotional shifts.
What makes Wolynn's contribution relevant is that he combines this therapeutic practice together with science and case histories, offering clear examples of how unspoken family trauma like abandonment, loss, or cruelty effect generations and set the tone for their emotional life. The therapy is not only a diagnostic tool but a ritual of release and repair.
This book and the therapeutic practice it explains have really left a lasting influence on my practices of healing, identity, and even art. It opens up questions about what we are carrying unconsciously, and how we might perhaps begin to name, notice, and transform these inherited emotional truths and that’s something that has significantly impacted my own research into the inner child.
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Ref: Wolynn, M. (2016) It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle. New York: Penguin Books.
Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites
by Mike Kelley – The Architecture of Emotional Excess
Mike Kelley's Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites (1991/1999), in MoMA, is a large suspended piece that stands many feet tall and wide and is made up of used stuffed animals sewn together in a disorganized and chaotic way surrounded by twelve brightly colored fiberglass "satellites" that release puffs of air freshener. Viewing this work in person was quite overwhelming and strangely familiar, it was like stepping into the architecture of a subconscious childhood.
Kelley is well known for using objects associated with childhood, including toys, dolls, and school supplies, to challenge American culture, memory, and trauma. In this piece, the soft toys which are typically discarded, dirty, and worn out are reformed into a monstrous, floating creature. They are no longer innocent. They are excessive, knotted, and disturbingly alive. Also, it felt like the "deodorizing" satellites are “sanitizing” the area, which might be a metaphor to how society wants to suppress the emotional mess of childhood trauma.
In his essay "Playing with Dead Things," Kelley considers the use of childhood imagery: "The stuffed animal was perfect… it was soft, fuzzy, anthropomorphic, and associated with love and care, but it was also -or at least in large quantities - monstrous, excessive, smothering" (Kelley, 1992). The tension of comfort and discomfort are central to the impact of this artwork.
Truly, what struck me the most is how Kelley uses scale, accumulation, and sensory overload to project internal states. The scale of the work can really overwhelm the viewer in the same way that unresolved childhood trauma can overwhelm the adult self.
This artwork speaks to the idea that the inner child isn't always joyful or sentimental, sometimes it's tangled, loud, and excessive. Kelley’s work always inspires me. His work embraces discomfort and emotional messiness which inspires me to explore childhood in its full spectrum.
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Ref: Kelley, M. (1992) ‘Playing with Dead Things: On the Uncanny’, in Foul Perfection: Essays and Criticism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 58–76.