Traces in the Coffee Grounds
A cup of coffee becomes a doorway into the inner world.
In this workshop, coffee fortune reading becomes a creative way to touch vulnerability, transform narratives, and look at one’s own story anew.——————>
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Coffee Fortune Workshop
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A Creative Experience on Vulnerability, Intervention, and Transformation
The magic of art lies in its ability to transform even the most ordinary rituals, making our inner worlds visible. Vulnerability, in this sense, is the capacity to look honestly at one’s essence—to notice difficult, uncertain, or unwanted aspects of oneself and to come into contact with them.
Based on this approach, the Coffee Fortune Workshop transformed an everyday habit into a psychological and creative space of exploration. The workshop was carried out with participants with orthopedic disabilities and aimed to create a safe space for expression, placing personal experience at its center.
Seeing Oneself from the Outside
In the first phase of the workshop, participants drank a cup of coffee and turned their cups upside down, waiting for the grounds to dry. When they opened their cups, they began to read their own fortunes through the abstract images formed by the coffee traces. These images gained meaning through associations and personal stories.
What mattered at this stage was not what was seen, but how it was interpreted. Participants gradually noticed that they liked some images, while others they preferred not to see. Encountering unwanted figures sometimes evoked discomfort or unease.
Intervening in the Fortune
In the second phase, participants were invited to intervene in the parts of the fortune they did not like. Although this suggestion initially felt strange and unfamiliar, it raised a powerful question:
“If we can intervene in the fortune, can we also intervene in our destiny?”
Participants wiped away coffee traces, reshaped lines, or added new symbols. These interventions were not only visual changes but also triggered emotional and mental transformations.
Transforming Vulnerability
This simple exercise demonstrated how the ritual of coffee fortune reading could become a powerful metaphor. Vulnerability was no longer perceived as fixed or unchangeable fate, but as a process that could be touched, engaged with, and reshaped.
The shapes in the cup carried traces of the past, yet intervening in them was possible in the here and now. This awareness offered participants not only the courage to look inward, but also the reminder that they could transform what they encountered there.
From Everyday Ritual to Inner Exploration
Coffee fortune reading is an attempt to search for meaning in moments of uncertainty and to find a story within each moment. Loving one’s fate does not mean passive acceptance; rather, it involves transforming the way we perceive both positive and negative experiences, allowing space for the fullness of the human condition through a broader perspective.
The Coffee Fortune Workshop made visible the longings, fears, and hopes hidden inside a single cup of coffee—and revealed that sometimes, through the most ordinary rituals, we can rewrite our own stories.