ART BASED RESEARCH
This page offers an insight into my arts-based research that forms the foundation of my inquiry into trauma, transformation, and symbolic expression. Grounded in Jungian analytical psychology and personal experience, my work explores how creative practice can serve as a path to self-understanding and psychological integration.
I am currently analysing the works that form the exhibition at the University of East London Doctorate Showcase, which will inform further work and research.
Works that already include analysis are indicated in the List of Works.
ANALYSIS OF WORKS
UEL DOCTORATE SHOWCASE 2025
List of Works
The Blackening with analysis
Beyond the Blackening with analysis
The Black Sun with analysis.
The Black Sun: Mise en Abyme (Into the Abyss) with analysis
Metacrisis: Trauma and Transformation
Year 3 Doctorate Showcase 2025
Statement
Introduction
My inquiry represents a search for meaning in response to complex and successive personal experiences of trauma, exacerbated by the existential threat to humanity and life on Earth that Daniel Schmachtenberger defines as the metacrisis. I am exploring the development of emotional resilience and a coherent sense of self to navigate our destabilised environment and address personal and collective dimensions of the meaning crisis, a principal component of the metacrisis.
Informed by Jungian theory and depth psychology, my focus has shifted from collective concerns to individual experience. Exploring broader psychological and existential themes through personal experience aligns with Jung's belief that 'the most effective way to redeem or transform the world is, first of all, to transform the little piece of it that is oneself' (Edinger & Blackmer, 1994).
Process
My practice is process-led. Unconscious material emerges in symbolic form, guiding my process, which parallels Jung’s concept of individuation and alchemical transformation. These symbols surface intuitively during making and shape both the development of the work and the direction of my research.
Nigredo
The works in this exhibition represent the processing of trauma and embody the nigredo stage of alchemy, which aligns with the first phase of the archetypal apocalypse, an encounter with psychic dissolution and darkness that initiates renewal. Nigredo represents psychic disintegration and darkness, a 'dark night of the soul' that begins the alchemical process in preparation for purification (albedo) and eventual transformation. Confronting trauma and psychic darkness by externalising repressed material through layered symbolic material facilitates the integration of the unconscious and transformation. Individuation and renewal emerge through the assimilation of the archetypal shadow.
Chaos and Order
The struggle between breakdown and reintegration in my practice reflects the archetypal tension between the Dionysian and Apollonian, chaos and order. This tension manifests in process and form: unresolved gestural expressions coexist with figurative imagery. Contrasting forms reflect the individuation process and the alchemical mysterium coniunctionis, where transformation arises through the symbolic union of opposites.
Mise en Abyme and Hyperreality
My process incorporates mise en abyme, a recursive visual structure, an image within an image, which evokes fragmentation, repetition, and infinite regress. This compositional device mirrors the cyclical nature of traumatic memory and dissociative states, where time collapses and the self becomes fractured. It challenges fixed perception and destabilises reality, evoking the uncanny and Lacan's concept of the Real: an experience that resists symbolisation and escapes integration into language or meaning.
Mise en abyme, which translates as 'into the abyss,' also echoes Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality, where the boundary between reality and simulation disintegrates. In the digital, postmodern world, this collapse obscures meaning and exacerbates a sense of disorientation, amplifying the metacrisis and connecting my personal experience of fragmentation to wider cultural crises.
Integration
My practice explores how art can mediate trauma, dissociation, and psychic destabilisation by offering a symbolic container through which unconscious content may emerge and transform. Through this process, I aim to facilitate Jung's concept of individuation, the integration and assimilation of unconscious material toward a more unified self.
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