My work is an exploration of derealisation ~ a dissociative state where the world, and specifically the self feels alien, foggy or simulated. In this state, the most familiar landscape ~one’s own face ~ becomes a site of profound estrangement.

In the sculptural book ‘Hanging by a Thread’ I use my own face as the primary site of deconstruction. The process begins with high contrast screen printing, that strips the human features of their nuance, leaving only binary shadows and stark voids. This mechanical reproduction mirrors the internal sensation of being a ‘representation of a person’ ~ a flattened version of the self viewed through a glass veil.

By physically folding this self portrait into a leporello (accordion) structure, I break the facial architecture. My features are severed and redistributed across jagged, intersecting planes, ensuring the face cannot be viewed as a cohesive whole. This structural instability reflects the nonlinear fragmented nature of a dissociative episode, where time and identity fail to align.

The work is literalised by its title; a blue thread pierces through the paper, physically suturing the fractured planes of my face. The thread is a tether ~ a desperate attempt to stitch together a narrative of the self and remain grounded in the present. It represents the exhausting mental labour required to maintain a connection to reality. While the thread binds the disparate fragments, it also creates a web of tension, illustrating a state of being that is perpetually precarious ~always on the verge of unravelling, always hanging by a thread.