Bubble Of One: Landscape of Trauma

January 2021

Pencil, ink and pastel

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In Bubble Of One I tried to highlight the struggles and isolation many of us have been experiencing 2020 - 2021. As a holistic, intuitive and shamanic therapist specialising in trauma recovery, many clients find it incredibly difficult to describe and verbalise what they are feeling.

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The head in the drawing is based on Victorian phrenology but instead of the section functions of the brain, there are a range of the emotions we dip in and out of when experiencing trauma's close, and often constant, companion PTSD. Grief, anger, self loathing, worry, fear, depression; emotions from previous wounds. When we are in the whirlwind of unhealed trauma, we are still in survival mode.

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The head is deliberately female - most phrenology heads are male, and most consumer and medical research is conducted with males as the default. This is discussed in detail in Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by 

Caroline Criado Perez.

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Women have unique but shared experiences as victims of societal, familial and partnership abuse and traumas, and often have multiple unhealed traumas throughout our lives.

While she exhibits a jawline more traditionally known in males, square and large, her face is intended to be strong yet gentle, bright yet blank, concealing the struggle underneath.

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The circle in the drawing is intended to be both a bubble of isolation but also to give the illusion of a looking glass, magnifying the isolation and offering a clinical, under-the-microscope perspective, which is often how both society and conventional medicine treat people experiencing trauma, as a range of symptoms and mental conditions and not as individuals where every part reflects the whole.

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There is also a hidden message within the artwork.

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Additional Information: Trauma: The Bubble Of One - blog post

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Price: NFS

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