Making Friends With My Inner Critic

JJ Jarin

Usually, when I’m preparing for a show or a piece, I go on these wanderings and observe my environment. Aside from looking at trees, shadows and textures, I tend to look up at the sky too.

I just think there’s something beneficial and encouraging when you look up at the sky. It may mean that things are improving for the better. And in the more literal sense, just by doing the gesture of shifting your gaze upwards, can make you feel more in awe and help you feel more grounded.

– JJ Jarin

“You’re not good enough!” “You don’t deserve it.” “That’s so stupid.” These are but some things we often hear when we put something of us out on the line.  It might be as simple as taking photos with the intent of sharing them on social media.  Or asking someone out on a date.  Or asking your boss for a raise.  Or deciding your special someone to marry you. Deciding to stay, or risking a new life in a new country.  Holding on, or letting go.  The list is endless.  Life is full of decisions, and often, before we go and make one, we hear this inner critic doubting our abilities, or making us question if what we intend to do is good or if it will work.

JJ Jarin’s “Making Friends With My Inner Critic” focuses on this. Realizing that such thoughts are the result of trauma and emotional baggage accrued from youth, Jarin recognizes that the voice comes from self-preservation, but that at the same time, to grow and to move on means to understand the fears being voiced out by our inner critic, but not be limited by them.  In this exhibition, JJ Jarin creates an arc from recognizing the ever present voice looming like a shadow, being attuned to values that are signposts to moving forward, finding common ground with his inner critic, and finally being free to pursue what he most desires.

Depicted in his signature style of contrasting living plants against seemingly unyielding backdrops, Jarin creates the drama between the struggle of growth and stagnation.  The unassuming plant, and its shadow, becomes the metaphor for the process of recognizing being stuck, discovering the effects of our self-doubt (Oh I Do Have A Shadow…), correcting ourselves to conform with society’s expectations and our own inner critics, and attempting to project a perfect image (The Identifier), to recognizing our stagnation (…And It Follows Me Everywhere), and finally permitting ourselves growth (Weight, Lifting I, II, and III) and emancipation (Everything Seems To Be Looking Up, At Last).

Just as humble plants create cracks on concrete pavements by the act of growing, Jarin seems to imply our agency in this solo exhibition.  But like the plant, as his works show stages of realization, it takes several factors like water, sunlight, and time, for it to be able to achieve the seemingly impossible feat.  Jarin’s body of work for “Making Friends With My Inner Critic” encourages us to reflect on our own personal journeys, and to be kind to ourselves most especially at these uncertain times.  The exhibition provides a much needed meditative interlude in this fast moving, noisy, and unsettling world.

It is not an end.  I may not have solved the problems, but it is the start of myself treating myself better.  The things around me might have remained the same, but they have changed because I have changed. – JJ Jarin

Written by Ricky Francisco