Isolation of the Mind

Isolation kills. When we are separated from the world, the mind seeks to destroy, no matter the cost. Post covid-19, waves of loneliness and of isolation have come to the surface and taken the world by storm, we are familiar with those emotions now more than ever.

I photographed my bedroom after not leaving it for a week while quarantining for covid in an attempt to recreate the experience. Included in the photograph are a bouquet of withering roses, litter piles of empty water bottles, homework and illustrations scattered on the ground, the blinds pulled shut, a computer on its charger and an unmarked calendar in a dimly lit room. I think that adding these details was my attempt at making a visual time capsule as the objects I included are representative of the way that I felt and the things that I did while in isolation. Even though I was extremely sick and really lonely, I still had to do homework- even if it was done while lying in bed. The wilting roses are a metaphor of humans being forced into a technological landscape and dying because of it.

The overlays on the photo are scanned transparents of a drawing I made of me being in conversation with my brain. I was able to integrate the drawing by uploading the drawing onto illustrator, removing the background and transferring the transparent image into photoshop. This illustration was meant to represent the harsh inner voice that I was experiencing as a result of my isolation. I gave my brain a physical form because at times the berating was so intense it felt as though it was a completely separate being that was bullying me. The figure that appears on the computer screen is a self portrait, I shrunk myself down and layered it over the computer screen to display how insignificant and detached I felt because at that point in time the only proof of my existence to the outside world was my presence online. My only interactions came from the digital world, which contributed to the derealization and sadness I felt.