Seeing Is Empathy

Mixed-media artist Morgan Harper Nichols explores how art can lead to empathy.

- By Morgan Harper Nichols

Recently I watched a documentary on abstract artist Hilma af Klint. I decided to watch this film after encountering her work online, and I had to know the story behind her art. Something about her work took me someplace else, even just from observing it on my tiny computer screen. I felt seen in these paintings, which was interesting considering these were abstract paintings.

As it turns out, I wasn’t alone in feeling this way. The documentary revealed that when her work was shown, years after her death, people fell to their knees and cried at the sight of these colorful otherworldly spirals, shapes, and symmetric lines that are painted on canvases that are nearly as tall as the room.

Over the course of my life, art has regularly made me feel seen. Yes, I’ve had many face-to-face encounters where I have felt seen by people, but it usually takes me weeks, months, or sometimes even years to process the full weight of connections that I’ve had with others. Something about art reminds me that I don’t need permission to be myself. When I am standing before a painting in a museum, I don’t need permission to feel. To take up space. To breathe.

To be seen is to be on the receiving end of empathy.

The word empathy found its way into our modern lexicon relatively recently. In her book