LISA BEHAN
“Compassion is hard-wired. It’s an evolutionary development that began with the parent-child relationship and, as societies have grown, has been extended to allow us to form supportive and caring relationships with our friends, neighbours, colleagues, and communities. In fact, the human species could never have survived and thrived without compassion – allowing us to create systems like healthcare and public services that bring support to millions.””
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Lisa Behan observes patterns with clarity and recognises when systems, processes or cultures are out of sync, and finds ways to gently recalibrate them back into cohesive flow using compassion.
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Lisa's experiential art is both a contemplation of compassion and a growing collection of compassionate stories. As people engage with the artwork, adding their own experiences of receiving or giving compassion, they can visually see the ripple effect of compassionate acts and the larger subtle flow on effect this has on a societal level. The natural substance to demonstrate ripples and flow is water which is why this artwork is part of the Aqua Limina exhibition. Contemplating water as a metaphor for compassion connects us to our relationship with nature allowing us to remember that the reason humans exist at all is because of water.
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A timely work - Confluence of Compassion is about recognising our common humanity – about seeing that we are all human with our own struggles, hopes, and needs. Knowing that, we bring a desire to care for, support, and value other people just as we would like to be cared for, valued, and supported. Not only that, it means creating whole societies in a way that everyone feels included and their needs met, defining our approach to everything from climate policy to economics.