Neural
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What do we create in the space pain occupies?
Neural is an examination of the neurological breakdown of the body via the use of fiber and titanium. By using my own diagnosis of fibromyalgia and CPRS as well as my father’s Lewy Body dementia as points of reference, I created a series of anthropomorphic forms engaged in neuropathic entropy. Pain was my process, my teacher, what I worked through to create a large scale installation of decomposing forms. Created over the course of a six-month flare-up, the work examines what it means to come to terms with my disabilities and discover what I could create in the space pain occupies. Through cutting I found catharsis, a new way to transmit what it’s like to live with chronic illness and heal.
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Consider your body and the things that surround it… the movement of messages up and down your spine swaddled in sinew and fabric. At birth, we’re swaddled in cloth, which covers our bodies in death, and we live the space between surrounded by fabric. Similarly, our nervous system is everywhere, always firing and relaying messages from the tips of our feet to the tops of our heads, keeping us in motion and connected to each other.
Neural is a community of pieces that make up a body. Each is unique, sensual, complete yet falling apart. Together they tell the story of the body, its scars, folds, frayed nerves. With each cut, a new synapse emerges, a new way to transmit the throbbing, the burning, the infinite losses caused by living with chronic pain.