Multimedia Sculpture

Artist Statement 

This piece is about past traumas that manifest in your nightmares, and my reliance on medication regarding my mental health. For as long as I can remember, I have had vivid, strange, and violent dreams. Most of the time, nightmares have multiple plots that make no sense. I find myself waking up confused, disoriented, and scared. Sleep is in fact our most vulnerable state, and what happens inside our minds while we sleep is completely out of our control. The concept of a lack of control is a very anxiety-inducing feeling, and I wanted to be able to capture the chaos of my subconscious. 

While thinking about materials for this project, I knew that I wanted to talk about my dependency on medication and incorporate real pill bottles and capsules into the piece for authenticity. For example, the pills located on the black platform are melatonin (a sleeping pill), and prazosin (a nightmare pill). I balanced the bed on the medicine bottles, each in a different position to create depth, and wove black and dark blue tule out from under the bed. The tule is meant to represent all the different dreams spilling out from under the bed. This shows that they cannot be contained no matter how many pills I take. Next, I created the mattress for the bed and folded up the makeshift bed sheet. I wanted to add more visual interest to the bed itself, so I used a splattered paint method, and made fingerprints on the sheet to look like someone was under the bed trying to claw their way out. 

The last addition to the piece that made it all come together was the snakeskin, graciously given to me by another classmate. I wasn’t sure how it would look, but when I think of the symbol of a snake, I think about being constricted and trapped. I truly feel that I am always trapped in my nightmares. The snake has also shed its skin, meaning that the nightmares themselves are evolving based on my own mental state.