Blueprint to my brain
This post, and the series of cyanotypes it accompanies, are my most personal ever.
About 3 years ago, I was told I had an aneurysm in an artery at the back of my head. For those who don’t know, an aneurysm is a weakening of an artery wall that cause it to bulge, a swelling of blood behind a weakened spot in the vessel. Often they do not cause any issues, and many people spend their whole life not knowing they have one, or knowing they do, but needing nothing more than monitoring. But if they rupture and bleed it can be devastating, leading to serious disability or death.
Because of my medical history, I had known for years that I could one day develop one but the diagnosis still left me reeling. It was not very big, but due to its position and my history, the doctors warned that there was enough of a possibility it could rupture and they recommended treating it. The 6 months from diagnostic to surgery were very scary, living with the knowledge that there was this thing in my brain that could kill me or completely alter my life, and that the best solution was a procedure that is of course not risk free either. Thankfully it went very well, and my aneurysm was coiled successfully. I am however at risk of developing more, or of this one coming back and need to have yearly MRIs to make sure everything is still fine.
So every year, I lie down in the scanner while sounds buzz and echo around my head; every year, various cuts of my brain are recorded in a series of images, and every year I get given a collection of print-outs to take home. Ever since the diagnosis, I have known there was a story to tell in these images, I knew that I wanted to use these records to create something. I could see something in them beyond their clinical context, something beautiful and fragile. I kept coming back to this idea regularly, staring at the pictures, but wasn’t sure what shape this work would take, what medium could do it justice, or even what I wanted to say with this idea.
And then I started printing cyanotypes and it clicked. I could quite literally create a blueprint of my brain:
I could see paths in the squiggles and loops of my veins, I could see maps in the patterns of my brain. I didn’t have to hide these images below layers of ink or paint for them to become part of my work, I could allow them to exist on the edge between artwork and diagnosis tool, distanced from their original function by the process, but still recognisable for what they are.
By turning them to cyanotypes, I would become a cartographer of the inside of my head, an archivist of this dark part of my life.
It has been a very intense project to work on. On the one hand, it required putting some distance between myself and my medical history, treating the images as I would any other artwork. And at the same time, it is forcing me to explore the emotions that have lingered since the surgery, and expose my most vulnerable self by sharing them with you.
So here it is, this is me, this is who I am. This is my brain, the cradle of everything I am. These are my arteries, my blood pulsing behind their fragile walls. This is my life, the past that has caused me so much anxiety but also made more resilient than before.
