Idalia Candelas's Drawings of Solitude and Everyday Life

Seasonal messages that love is in the air can make romantic relationships seem like the only subject worth celebrating. Song reference: Love Is in the Air This gallery offers another perspective on the theme associated with single ladies: time spent in one’s own company, represented through quiet everyday scenes.

Mexico-based artist Idalia Candelas gives solitude a visible setting in black-and-white drawings of women going about their lives.

The absence of another person is part of the composition, rather than an automatic sign that something is missing.

The woman behind the images is Mexico-based artist Idalia Candelas, who told Mic she uses pencil, ink and watercolor. She has named this particular series “Postmodern Loneliness” and published the drawings in a small book titled Alone.

Candelas said the project was mostly inspired by her time living alone in Mexico City.

“The theme of the loneliness has been recurring in my drawings,” she said. “Even though people try to avoid [it] [out of] fear, being in that situation is increasingly common in our society.”

But don’t let the words “loneliness” or “alone” fool you — Candelas doesn’t believe spending time alone is a bad thing.

“I like to show women who exist in solitude but do not suffer,” Candelas said. “They are not depressed or crying. Rather [they] are safe, exalting in the sense of enjoying the company of just herself.”

There can be a stigma attached to spending time alone, as though an unaccompanied person must be waiting for company. Candelas’s account of her work challenges that assumption. The pleasure her figures suggest belongs to a particular kind of solitude: having room for oneself. Chosen privacy and unwanted isolation describe different experiences, so an image of one cannot explain every person’s experience of the other. CityLab: the stigma of doing things alone Slate: social isolation and health The Atlantic: enjoying activities alone

A study of solo holiday travellers by Constanza Bianchi, first published online in 2015, offers a more specific comparison. It associated satisfaction with “personal feelings of freedom, relaxation and discovery,” and also with interaction with other people. Safety concerns and unfriendly service contributed to dissatisfaction. Travelling without a companion did not mean that other people ceased to matter. That finding concerns holiday experiences, rather than the effects of living alone or a treatment for depression. Candelas’s drawings address a different question again: how to give ordinary moments of solitude a place in art without automatically presenting the subject as unhappy. Constanza Bianchi: solo holiday travellers Psychology Today: perspectives on time alone Related research in JSTOR

The drawings can be appreciated without turning them into advice about how anyone must spend a holiday. Their interest lies in the ordinary activities and private spaces given room on the page.

Check out more of Candelas’ work over on her Instagram.

Source: Mic via Idealist4ever

Related:

Solitude has an ordinary setting

An empty area around a figure can suggest privacy rather than abandonment. A relaxed pose or familiar domestic object may make the room feel occupied and sufficient, even with only one person present. That is a visual interpretation the artist can explore without prescribing the same experience for every viewer. The drawings leave room for pleasure in solitude while preserving the difference between an image, an intention and a health claim.