Open Access
Published: October 2026
Licence: CC BY-NC-4.0
Issue: Vol.21, No.2
Word count: 1,868
About the author
Hanging the remnants: A reflection on the mundane
Istvan Csata
Abstract
This illustrated reflection explores the intersections of domestic ritual, sensory perception, and expressive arts therapy through the lens of a simple everyday act: hanging laundry. The author examines this ‘mundane’ experience as a site for creative self-reflection through ‘cognitive-creative-artistic distance’. Drawing upon the theoretical frameworks of Knill et al.’s (2003) ‘aesthetic responsibility’ and Shaun McNiff’s (1995) metaphors of sensory ‘angels’, the narrative investigates how documenting the ordinary – via creative writing, photography, digital media, and visual arts – serves as an antidote to the ‘anaesthetised’ state of modern life. Ultimately, the piece suggests that for a practising arts therapist, staying present to ‘invitational beauty’ may provide an essential grounding practice.
Keywords
Expressive arts therapy, aesthetic responsibility, mundane beauty, sensory perception, Aotearoa, domestic ritual, self-reflection
Cite this reflectionCsata, I. (2026). Hanging the remnants: A reflection on the mundane. JoCAT, 21(2). https://www.jocat-online.org/re-26-csata
You can listen to the podcast here:
You can read RTM’s creative response here:
Hanging the remnants – Between Sky and Earth
I stand between Ranginui and Papatūānuku,[1] hanging the remnants of our week. I am watching the wind dance with the colourful fabrics of socks, t-shirts, and tea towels (Figure 1). Mediated by the sun, these items are in a liminal state of transition: moving from wet to dry, from heavy to light, and from soft to stiff.
Figure 1. Istvan Csata, Shelter I, 2025, digital photograph.
Figure 2. Istvan Csata, Shelter II, 2025, digital photograph.
It has been years since I first became aware of a recurring fascination with this scene. Seeing the colourful fabrics, touching the various textures, and breathing in the tranquil air among the drying clothes all captured and held my attention; such profound peace emanated from this simple spectacle. With Figure 1, my attention and senses are captured by the colours, whereas the black-and-white monotone of Figure 2 allows space for the shapes to be more visible. To deepen my self-reflection on this recurring experience, I began documenting and multi-modally exploring the phenomenon further. I used whatever technical recording appliances were at hand: a smartphone, a digital camera, a simple Polaroid, or visual art media. Driven by the psychological pressure of practising arts therapy, I sought to counter burnout and reconnect with my own ‘body-minded reality’. I sought a ‘cognitive-creative-artistic distance’ – a process of stepping back to view the familiar with fresh eyes – from an experience that was otherwise embedded in my everyday life.
Figure 3. Istvan Csata, Whisper, 2025, watercolour on paper, 150 × 200mm.
Using watercolour allowed me to embody this exact physical process through art-making (Figure 3). The fluid, unpredictable nature of water collaborating with pigment on paper echoed how the wind and sun collaborate with the wet fabric. Where photography could capture a sharp, ‘unbearably electric’ moment in time, the watercolour medium allowed me to slow down and capture a more meditative feeling of the peace emanating from the scene (hence the title, Whisper). The pink and salmon hues provided warm, gentle tones that represent the transition of light. They served me as a visual antidote to stress, creating a safe, nurturing, therapeutic aesthetic space. I deepened my exploration, swapping watercolour for the camera. Radically zooming in offered a shift in perspective, stripping away the ordinary association of chores and functionality (Figure 4). Zoomed in, the pole transformed into the mast of a sailing boat – once home to a resting kingfisher.
Figure 4. Istvan Csata, Beacon, 2025, digital photograph.
A question posed by Knill et al. (2003) haunted me: “Could it be that genuine beauty has become absent from our daily life to such an extent that we have to anesthetize in order to protect ourselves from sensing abusive realities?” (p.72). It haunted me because it illuminated a professional and personal paradox. As an arts therapist, I was trained to dive into the heavy, traumatic realities of my clients’ lives, often holding immense psychological space for their suffering. Knill et al.’s (2003) warning – that I might unconsciously anaesthetise or numb my own senses just to survive the daily realities – struck a chord with me. To de-anaesthetise myself, I couldn’t just wait for rare or grand moments of inspiration; I had to actively practise aesthetic responsibility– staying sensorially and imaginatively attentive to everyday experience, even amid difficult realities – in my immediate, everyday environment.
Week after week, I carried the fabric scarf and sheet drama props from my therapy sessions back to our rented house, washing and then physically hanging them alongside the household’s everyday clothes on our old, sculptural rotary clothesline. The contrast between the heavy psychological demands of my work and the light, transitioning fabrics dancing in the wind guided me towards this reflection.
Engaging with the question posed by Knill et al. made me wonder if creating these images as part of my personal creative practice could help refresh my ordinary visual perception. Would transposing and contemplating them allow me to feel more grounded, more at home in my own existence? As an expressive arts therapist, is that not my ethical responsibility?
Figure 5. Istvan Csata, Restrictions, 2025, digital photograph.
Figure 5 leads me to ponder Shaun McNiff’s (1995) book Earth Angels, in which he suggests that everyday objects and physical environments possess their own autonomous, sacred presences – which he calls ‘angels’ – that communicate with us directly through our sensory organs. Instead of relying on extrasensory or mystical visions, McNiff asserts that “Anybody who can perceive through the senses can experience the angels I will be evoking” (p.5), positioning the senses as natural receptors to the sacred architecture of the mundane world. Creative reflection through art-making becomes the vehicle through which we actively attune to these inherent sensory gifts. While my own theoretical orientation views art less as a literal angelic presence and more as a ‘meaning maker’ – a “yearning toward the emergent” (Knill et al., 2003, p.75) – I deeply appreciate McNiff’s framing of sensory phenomena as something bestowed upon us. This resonates with an aesthetic responsibility to welcome what is given.
I have come to practise this welcoming while hanging linen out to dry, remaining fully present to the intense olfactory sensation of the ritual – a cleansing born from a visceral collaboration between my senses, the wind, and an ordinary household process. I am not just a spectator; I am deeply entangled in living dialogue with the world around me.
I employ creative writing to capture the unfiltered immediacy of this relational encounter. The following passage is an excerpt from a poetic, stream-of-consciousness reflection from my journal.
I am loosening
I’m loosening myself; I’m flying. I like the wind. What I like the most is that it holds me true; it challenges me but also holds me. It’s so momentary, unpredictable air – the basic substance for life, for breathing.
But how many times I felt breathless, breathless in the strong gusts here in Aotearoa. A gust of wind blocked me, whilst also letting me move away from my homeland (Hungary); it encouraged me to hover over the ground and inspired me to look further away towards directions that otherwise I never considered.
The wind pointed somewhere. Once, my hat was thrown into Lake Taupo by the wind. I was just watching as that most elegant garment I had ever owned was gently moving away with the waves.
You take things, wind, but you also elevate us, whispering the news of fragility through our veins.
No defence.
You are with the wind. It smells like unfiltered life – moisture heightens the now. Things are getting unbearably electric with you: too real but anchored. (Excerpt from I am loosening, unpublished manuscript, 2025)
As a practising arts therapist, the psychological demand to temporarily bracket my own personal concerns in order to offer my clients a fully attuned body–mind presence can be taxing. To maintain this professional holding-of-space for the clients, I often must suppress my own body–minded reality. Staying present to the “invitational beauty” and “soul-stirring” qualities of everyday life when I return home has become a vital practice for balancing work and life (Knill et al., 2005, p.70). Sensing the drying clothes and washing lines literally – engaging with the actual aesthetic qualities of fragrance, sunshine, and movement – serves as a transitional space where I can safely unburden myself and ground my senses.
Figure 6. Istvan Csata, Scaffolding, 2025, thermal Polaroid and collage, 140 × 210mm.
Figure 6 shows the distinctive shape of the old rotary clothesline – a shape I have found myself drawn to since moving into our home. To me, it is almost like a sculpture, a ‘mobile’ that spins like a windmill. From beneath, it forms a star shape; one Christmas, we even decorated it with fairy lights. Occasionally I leave the colourful pegs on the wire, enjoying the simple beauty of their arrangement. A large white sheet hanging against the blue sky strikes me as a celebratory sight. The stark contrast of brilliant white against an expansive blue sky evokes a feeling of openness. It feels like a victorious flag, raised to mark the renewal of the day. That victoriousness has been confirmed so many times by other beings as well. Birds often perch on the lines; the sparrows share with me their powerful social chatter and playful gymnastics on the wire. Outstanding, rare visitors like the kōtare – the sacred kingfisher – always take my breath away with their pure beauty when they decide to join. (Once I even managed to take a photo of the king – however, the moment resisted being captured; the resulting image was too blurry for viewing). My clothes and the washed drama props I use for therapy sessions, stretched by gravity toward the land, appear like exuviae (Figure 7) – the shed skins of cicadas – promising a new beginning.
Figure 7. Istvan Csata, Exuviae I, 2025, digital photograph.
In time, I created my own method of engagement, using artistic reflection to appreciate the visual splendour of the laundry – its hues, patterns, and shapes – temporarily stripping away its functionality (McNiff, 1992). I found joy in watching the wind and open space collaborate to construct ever-shifting patterns of shadow and colour upon the skinny, bony structure of the rack.
Figure 8. Istvan Csata, Exuviae II, 2025, digital photograph.
When I hang the washing, by viewing the clothes from below I am offered yet another perspective (Figure 8). From this view, the connection between Earth and Sky becomes simply undeniable as the fabrics bridge the two realms. It is good to be reminded of the beauty to be found within the mundane, and to benefit from the connection and grounding it can offer as we exist in the in-between.
Interestingly, the associations of peace mentioned earlier persist even at night. While leaving washing out overnight may not be ‘good household practice’, it is widely accepted in Aotearoa New Zealand, and it has proven to be an intriguing aesthetic encounter. The dark space seems to embrace the fabric, covering the colours we left behind with a warm, black skin (Figures 9 and 10). This triggers my imagination deeply. The darkness strips away the familiar daytime identity of the garments, silencing their colours, and creates new, mysterious forms in the shadows (Figures 9 and 11).
Figure 9. Istvan Csata, Naga, 2025, graphite on paper, 210 × 140mm.
Figure 10. Istvan Csata, Day=Night, 2025, digital photograph.
Figure 11. Istvan Csata, Whirlpool, 2025, charcoal on paper, 140 × 210mm.
I return to my washing line, where the mundane turns unbearably electric under the sky, and where the heavy ghosts of the therapy room are washed clean, transformed into celebratory white sheets, whilst the dark night waits to cocoon my shed skins in its black embrace.
Postscript: On an impulse buy, I bought a wind chime and hung it from the metal frame (Figure 12). Since then, the wind has seized its chance and dominates this tiny spot on Earth. Its tinkling signals its presence almost every minute. (Interestingly, when I hang the washing, the jerks created by my touching the lines play the bells as well, but the sound is not as soothing as when the wind goes solo without human interference.)
Figure 12. Istvan Csata, Tubular bells, 2026, digital photograph.
Endnote
[1] According to Māori cosmology, Papatūānuku (the earth mother) and Ranginui (the sky father) are the primordial parents whose forced separation brought light and life into the world, establishing the sacred interconnectedness of all nature. [back to place]
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Amanda Levey, whose encouragement inspired the writing of this essay.
References
Knill, P.J., Barba, H.N., & Fuchs, M.N. (2003). Minstrels of soul: Intermodal expressive therapy. EGS Press.
Knill, P.J., Levine, E.G., & Levine, S.K. (2005). Principles and practice of expressive arts therapy: Toward a sensate philosophy. Jessica Kingsley.
McNiff, S. (1992). Art as medicine: Creating a therapy of the imagination. Shambhala.
McNiff, S. (1995). Earth angels: Engaging the sacred in everyday things. Shambhala.
Author
Istvan Csata
PhD, MA(Hons), PgDip, BA(Tchg), BA(Hons), BA, Dip(DMT), AThR
Istvan is a multidisciplinary a(i)rtist, educator and registered arts therapist whose practice bridges education, psychology, and the creative arts. After earning a Doctorate in Political Science and Jurisprudence in Hungary, he expanded his expertise into philosophy, art, and alternative education. Following his move to Aotearoa New Zealand in 2006, Istvan completed a Clinical Master of Arts in Arts Therapy at Whitecliffe College. Istvan works extensively with neurodivergent children in West Auckland, utilising drama and other arts modalities to foster emotional attunement and inclusivity.
Email: istvan.csata@oaklynn.school.nz
https://www.instagram.com/csata.istvan/