“Art saved me,” Sika says. She follows what she feels, working together with her art and letting it guide her. She doesn’t plan; she begins. Every morning she wakes and starts making — sweeping, arranging, painting, assembling — because stillness feels like absence. “If I’m not working,” she says, “it’s like I’m not alive.” It was Sika’s grandmother who taught her how to make something from nothing — how to turn what’s broken into something beautiful. That lesson never left her. The materials and colours she uses come from what she encounters in her daily life — fragments that speak to her soul. She makes art for herself first, saying, “If I love it, it’s good for me.” It’s never for someone else. Her art lives beyond the studio, as she uses creativity to reach into her community. She has become an artist activist, using art to unite her neighbours, resist eviction, and build collective strength. For Sika, art is not only personal healing but also a way of connecting people and transforming hardship into solidarity. Art has taught her courage — the courage to live her own life instead of the one others imagined for her. It has also taught her patience and faith in the slow process of becoming who she is meant to be. “Only we artists are living the real life,” she says. “We have to ask ourselves — are we living according to our own real purpose?” Her way of seeing comes directly from the life she has lived: follow your truth, and follow it all the way through.