The Geography of Self
A bodymapping collaboration with King’s College London
The Geography of Self is a dual-panel, hand-cut paper installation created in collaboration with students at King’s College London, as part of an ESRC funded project - VEM - Visual Embodied Methodologies Network exploring campus experiences of sexual harassment, intimacy, consent, and boundaries. This work was commissioned to me, by Dr. Jelke Boesten.
Drawing from six individual body maps produced during a facilitated (Saskia Zielińska) workshop, this work serves as a collective portrait of vulnerability, resilience, and transformation.
Each student was invited to express emotions in relation to parts of the body where they physically or psychologically held their experiences. These maps, annotated with personal reflections, formed the basis of the final composite pieces. I approached the interpretation not simply as an act of translation, but as a deep relational engagement, mapping layered testimonies through metaphor, materiality, and form.
Created using acrylic paints and intricate hand-cutting, the two life-size figures are composed of symbolic motifs drawn directly from the participants’ original marks and language: flowers signifying emotional intimacy; spirals to express internal chaos or trust; clouds as metaphors for emotional boundaries; waves representing the ebb and flow of trauma; and abstract anatomical forms hinting at touch, communication, and strength. Their shapes emerge from repeated gestures of carving, scraping, peeling back, to echo the enduring imprint of lived experience on the body.
Placed in large street-facing windows at King’s College London, the works are designed as dual-sided pieces, with vibrant layers of colour sandwiched between cuts. The artworks shift as the light changes throughout the day. From the outside, they radiate colour and coherence; from within, their negative spaces allow light and shadow to spill into the room: a symbolic gesture toward the ways in which internal states remain partially visible, partially hidden.
As a survivor of gender-based abuse, this was not merely an artistic commission; it was a personal unearthing. While developing this piece, I found myself revisiting my own past, navigating my relationship with the body, silence, shame, and recovery. The process was not one of detachment, but of co-witnessing. The participants and I... though strangers... were entangled in an emotional topology shaped by collective experience.
This work also marks a shift in my visual practice. The Geography of Self is my first fully non-photographic work, expanding into pure visual language through drawing, mark-making, layering, and sculpture. Still grounded in socially engaged storytelling and a deep ethical responsibility to those whose stories I interpret, this piece invites viewers to witness, reflect, and hold space.
Ultimately, this is a cartography of survival: the intimate, messy, resilient terrain of the self.
I’m grateful to the students who trusted their truths to this process, and to the team at King’s including the incredible Phoebe Martin and the amazing curator Gemma Hollington for holding space for art that listens deeply.
