2024
Blown Glass, sand blasting,
Cyanotype on Fabric
Immersion is a work that speaks to the delicate tension between healing and suppression. In this work, the pill is a tool to explore how trauma is processed and contained. The piece combines blown and sandblasted glass with a cyanotype on the fabric. It features a submerged figure trapped within the pill’s transparent shell to frame a space where vulnerability, preservation, and control collide.
The pill, as an object, traditionally functions as a healing tool, but it also carries connotations of suppression and preservation. It represents the complex relationship survivors have with their pasts, asking whether the act of sealing away painful memories and emotions can truly lead to healing or if it merely suppresses them. This object becomes a metaphor for the ways we manage trauma through medication by numbing or compartmentalizing it rather than confronting it directly.
However, in many cases, medicine doesn’t erase the trauma or emotional pain; it merely helps to manage the intensity or visibility of that pain in everyday life. We don’t necessarily take pills to forget but rather to dull the sharpness of what we’re feeling, to make it more bearable. The act of taking medication is a kind of sacrifice; we’re sacrificing the chance to fully process our emotions in exchange for being able to function and get through the day. But the question is, does it allow us to move on, or does it keep us trapped in a cycle of avoidance?