Art Gallery

Lucid Void

This body of work explores the effects of sensory deprivation on the mind and body by using literary and art historical Gothic sensibilities. Under certain circumstances, sensory deprivation can produce hallucinations, paranoia, anhedonia, loss of personal identity, and symptoms of psychosis that disconnect the subject from reality. The conditions of sensory deprivation fall far below the mind’s optimal level of stimulation, leaving room for much to go wrong in the brain. I decided to try sensory deprivation for myself and spent an hour and a half in a tank, knowing that previous research has documented altered brain function and hallucinations occurring after as little as fifteen minutes. What I came away from the experience with greatly inspired my portraits and sculptures.

In the drawings, the eyeless and earless figures are in a state of sensory deprivation that reduces their environment to the horrors the mind invents for them. Their gaudily decorated environments are inspired by the chaotically crowded detailing of Gothic illuminated manuscripts, and are representative of the mind’s disconcerting imaginations that fill the lack of sensory perception. The sculpted hands address the sense of touch, since a lot of our sense of touch is concentrated there. They also battle the environment of the mind, experiencing their own Gothic horror story as their state of being becomes confused and overtaken. The decorated environments are filled with natural and bodily elements. Because the experience of sensory deprivation is a reaction exclusively between the mind and body, I designed the generated horrors to reference the idea of the body and what is lost from the body accordingly. It is a unique horror to be confronted by something both familiar and yet other and strange.