School of Creative
Industries
Aletheia Lynne Tan
Aletheia Lynne Tan is a sculptor and trained arts educator who has been working with youths for close to two decades before pivoting to art therapy. Her art pieces have been exhibited in Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia and India. Her artwork was also recently featured as the cover art for JoCAT: The Journal of the Creative Arts Therapies, volume 15, number 1, 2020. An avid learner and curious explorer of materials and textures, she believes that art-making is a doorway to many opportune discoveries. She enjoys interacting with people, inspiring others to create and travelling with fellow artists to make art. With art therapy, she is keen to explore how such art-making trips can birth new meanings to those around her and herself.
Work
Unravel
Yarn
Dimensions variable
2021
Unravel is made up of many units of handmade coasters strung and rolled into a body of artwork. It invites the visitor to unpick and take one home. Unravel marks an intimate discovery of self where the artist experienced grounding and learnt what it meant to trust the process. With each coaster uniquely created, it is the artist’s hope that each piece carries a life of its own, into the dwelling of its new owner and continues to unravel new conversations.
Thesis abstract
Art media and art-making process: a qualitative inquiry of art therapy with women in substance recovery in Singapore
This dissertation outlined and critically analysed an art therapy trainee’s clinical experience with three local women undergoing substance recovery in a Singapore drug rehabilitation centre. This practitioner-based psychodynamic art psychotherapy account not only highlighted the state’s effort against illicit substance use and drug trafficking but also sought to elucidate the possible influence of an art therapist’s work in art media and the art-making process on these women. This was done via a person-centered therapy approach infused with four art therapy orientations – artistic sensibilities, Expressive Therapies Continuum (ETC), material potential and the ‘third hand’. The research was underpinned with a qualitative approach and corroborated with the use of multiple case vignettes and case study method. The thesis concluded with clinical implications while paving the way for further research studies on local women in substance recovery and how art therapists could sharpen their clinical practice in Singapore.