Halina L.

Integration
Credit: Halina L.Artist Bio

Halina Li (she/her) is a bi-lingual speaker (Chinese and English), and a bi-cultural emerging art therapist. She changed her career from corporate Human Resources to Art Therapy because she found her calling to help people become the best version of themselves, and she truly believes that art is so powerful that she can realize this goal. Halina has passion and rich experience in working with children as a Chinese teacher and an emerging art therapist in a school-based site. Being a new art therapist is also a path of acculturation, finding her new identity in a foreign country, and finding the meaning of life in middle age.

Artist Statement

Integration

Material: watercolor on 18*24 inch watercolor paper

This art piece represents my personal development process in graduate school. In the center of the art, I used the Chinese character “Heal” to identify myself as a healer. Also, I used Chinese to symbolize the culture and language of where I come from. Surrounding the character, there are four seasonal plants to represent healing as a long-term, day-by-day process. On the left side of the art are two western botanical trees, and on the right are a lotus and a peony. The peony is China’s national flower, and the lotus is a symbol of Buddhism, which is my religion. I integrated all these elements to represent my new identity: an emerging art therapist from China who is in the process of acculturation of Western culture.

Let’s play art!

Material: Fabric & Mixed Media

This art piece represents my internship experience in a school-based therapeutic program. At the school, I have found deep connections with my clients. These children are studying in this school because of the different diagnoses they have received. They have encountered various challenges to integrate into the mainstream student bodies at public schools. Like me, in a field traditionally dominated by white females, I am not a mainstream art therapist. But in the art therapy room, we have had a lot of fun connecting through art, and we have been growing together to the best version of ourselves.

All the art pieces sewn on the shirt are my art demonstrations. Every week, we would explore different art materials and art prompts. I was amazed by the creativeness of these children and deeply touched by their resilience to face the strenuous life as well as their passion for art. I am a cheerleader in this room, cheering for their great art creation, mental health breakthrough, and cognitive as well as emotional development. I am honored to be invited into their life with their trust as a front-row audience to cry, laugh, and play art with them.