Transpersonal Labyrinth  Emily Lacon-Allin

New Gallery

by Emily Lacon-Allin

“They will see that what was considered ‘schizophrenic’ was one of the forms in which, often through quite ordinary people, the light began to break into our all-too-closed minds.” – Ronald D.Laing

My body of work aims to piece together my past trauma and transpersonal phenomena by exploring themes of sexual assault, PTSD, and psychosis/ schizophrenia as a spiritual emergency or a psycho-spiritual crisis that is necessary for healing. My installation portrays an illusion to a transpersonal Labyrinth, creeping across surfaces like an infection.  A visual depiction of my experience with psycho-spiritual crisis, portraying the unbearably distressing psychic overload experience of subconscious material.

Curious in evoking grotesque and uncomfortable sensations through a collage technique, I bring to life the voices and visions of psychosis and prophecy I experienced in a struggle to grapple with the unexplained vs my normative perceived reality. Three-dimensional organic shapes form a detailed yet claustrophobic labyrinth encompassing the room, an intricate and perplexing journey into the centre of myself.  

My collage technique consists of the cathartic act of cutting up various mixed media artworks, each encapsulating their own vision or experience in an attempt to heal. I approach the surface of my artmaking with a catalysing technique, followed by an intuitively guided process of drawing out my figures from the expressive lines combined with a recollection of mishap memories. Some of the artworks are painted on top of older paintings, highlighting that the healing process isn’t linear, the trauma doesn’t go away but instead is held in the body and is used to guide us.