So Within, So Without

Insight from my own lived experience of chronic pain, informs my curiosity into how materials and making can be used to express intense feelings of overwhelm.

Sometimes it is really hard to talk about pain, there can be a lot of shame when it affects your employment and also creates barriers in building relationships and friendships.  My experience working in Pain Management showed me that it is important to really see people, to see the ‘in between’ bits, the things unsaid.  To open up pathways into difficult conversations, so we can move through pain and start letting go of what holds us.

My research interviews with Health Specialists provides an interdisciplinary perspective into how people find it difficult to verbalize pain and how it creates life challenges of depression and isolation.  Design has the ability to change how we see these emotions and create tangible objects to help us understand.

I work intuitively in metal and resin materials, to employ design and craft methodologies.  Exploring how objects can hold space for an embodiment of our emotions connected to pain.

My artistic representation for this installation, is to create a way to see through pain, whilst experiencing a feeling of immersion.  The cage, a metaphor for the pain that holds us within and the disconnection felt without, on the outside, is to encourage open and difficult conversations with others around pain.