I’ve lived with frequent migraines for my entire adult life. They’re frustrating, they’re debilitating, they’re exhausting, they’re ethereal, and sometimes they’re welcoming. My migraines often make me feel torn from reality, floating in a familiar liminal space that isn’t quite real but isn’t fake either. 

Right before I am thrown into my frequently visited liminal space, I’m met with memory loss, dizziness, light and smell sensitivity, and other general rotating migraine symptoms. As I crash down into this space I’ve made my second home, I’m met with intense pain; I’m untethered from reality, floating just outside of the real world. I allow myself to slowly drift off, finally free from my worldly constraints. When I’m finally pushed back into reality, it happens more gently than when I disappeared; but not without the confusion, a dry mouth, the urge to get up despite the heaviness in my body, and the small feeling of wishing I could stay.

This body of work is both a reflection of my migraine experience, and an exploration of the feelings I have about them. The experimental processes I used for this work - pinhole and film soup - reflect the distortion I experience during migraines. While the imagery remains rooted in the familiar, these methods introduce unpredictable effects, mirroring the uncontrollable nature of my migraine frequency and intensity.