Flying away on Erasmus Exchange...

To think back to the beginning of this journey; me and a suitcase and not knowing where I was going to go, who I was going to meet, or even where I was going to live...It has been one of, if not the most extraordinary journeys of my life.

The magical thing about beginning somewhere new and installing yourself in a place you have never been before is that it gives you such freedom, and allows you to really open to everything around you. Milan has been a wonderful city to do this in, it has such a lovely and friendly nature, and has almost a familiar presence as if I had been here before. Over my time here it has very much embraced and opened itself to me. I feel extremely privileged to have been able to experience this. I have had the most astonishing luck in pretty much all of my encounters...

Now, I am at the end of my journey here where I am realising that everything I have learnt will all transcend into my journey back home. I am a completely different person and I notice it so vividly as if what I have really focused on in my time here is becoming the person I have always wanted to be... It is like the energy within me has changed and like I breathe a different air internally. I think that this is the most wonderful thing that could have come from this experience, the transformation of the self into a much more stronger and beautiful being...

My class have been wonderful; they truly embraced me from the beginning and made me feel part of their group, which I never imagined to be possible in such a small space of time. They are such a wonderful interesting group, with fantastic characters that have very much inspired me. It is something that has allowed me to be part of a group, a thing I always wanted back home. I now, when I go back will try to engage more with the people around me and bring them together in my artistic practice, because I feel there is nothing more special than to feel part of something.

My teachers have also been wonderful, there has been some tension at times and an overwhelming sense of frustration, bit in the end they have given me barriers to break and overcome and have helped me to find my way, that with time has allowed me to shape myself and truly come to grips with who I want to be as an artist...If there is one thing that has changed is my grasp on defining myself as one thing, I think it completely blocked me before and I think that the right approach is to just be you- your identity is you- everything that comes from you is a part of you. So now, when anyone asks me what I do, I say: "I am Sylvia". That is my artistic identity and that is what I will stuck to because I realise that this is the most natural way of approaching myself as an artist and being a person who yearns for that connection with nature, I feel it is the right way for me to go...

What this whole experience has also made me think about is where I want to go, my next step after university because that in a sense will be the beginning foe me, and I think it is important to have some sense of direction at the beginning of something, an initial motivation and energy that keeps you fighting...

I have realised that travelling is going to play a huge part in my explorations as an artist. I can't think of a better way to create things than to install yourself in a new space and intervene with your surroundings.

I have also acknowledged in this new step, that it will also be very hard to leave uni, as it has been a sort of shell like space. Once it is over I will need to come out of the shell and create my own habitat, but in a sense that is what I have been doing whilst being here, creating my own foundations to walk on. Now I have an internal framework and a base to walk on and also a very strong sense of myself and where I want to go. I think it is important that once I leave uni I get involved with the external world and join festivals and collectives and to move with them. Then I want to go on a more personal journey and travel.

I very much want to go to New York and to see what faces me there, but maybe once I have done a masters. I want to do a masters as a way to re-enforce what I really want to do, to create the final jump towards it before I project myself into the world. But at the core of me is the essence that I must travel and experience cultures and journeys that I have never seen before because it is the nature of the unknown that really shapes us into who we are...

Fundamentally I want to be a person. A person of worth, of openness and freedom. A person of happiness...

I look to go back and to manifest this journey into the beginning of my next final year, and the year that I truly define myself through my work, the year that I project myself and I have to say that I am very ready to do this, it has been this feeling that I have been looking for, for a long time...

I think people are going to see me for the first time, who I have always truly been, but never could express because of my own suffocation and insecurity in who to project...In this state of freedom I feel like a sheer of light, I have finally made that transition and I am so happy it has come before the end. In a sense that is why I came on this journey, to re-find myself, to come away from everything that was trapping me and to fly away like a phoenix, born form the ashes to become young again. And truly I feel younger than ever, there is no hidden weight, no darkness lingers, all my voices are washed and I smile internally.

Now I can be the mirror. Now I have the strength to be who I have always wanted to become; a person of light in the world, someone who could inspire others, to reveal a sense of truth, to create freedom and to show strength that lies within us. To be an artist that creates space for the public to find themselves within, for I feel this is the opportunity we are all looking for...

I have faced my mirror and for the first time in my life I see myself truly as I am and I can smile at this encounter, like a sphere of self acceptance, where now I can face all the journeys to come, in which all of them I will find different parts of myself within them that I never knew before, like the invisible traits that make up someone life...

The only thing now is that I am ready to face them, because I have finally trust myself, the skin that dwell within, my mind and heart, we are all connected as one body, in sync with the internal and eternal that al all continue to search for knowledge and findings, happenings and discoveries, where I embrace life and follow the trails it leaves to create the final composition of my soul...