My current practice delves into my experiences with a dissociation disorder, and how this impacts the way I view and interact with the world. Dissociation is often described as a detachment or disconnection from yourself and/or your surroundings, feeling as though the world is ‘unreal’. Many people describe this as though they are watching their life virtually through a screen. Having experienced intense dissociation from a young age, it has drastically impacted the way I perceive the world and I try to capture these experiences through my artwork. Using technology as a backbone throughout my practice, I lean into ‘glitches’ and ‘errors’ to inform my aesthetic as I find this perfectly captures the uncanny and unreal representation of the world.
My degree show work, the Passage Series, offers ambiguous depictions of enigmatic and often liminal spaces. A harsh green shape cuts across the paintings, as if an apparition. This glitched shape operates as a self-portrait, reflective of me moving through these interiors as an intangible form, something unreal.
I aim to spark conversation and offer catharsis for others who may share similar experiences, using the visual tool of art to further understand a topic that is often beyond words.
