KAT BAWDEN
Perceptual Isolation
The through-line of my work is an exploration of duality and liminal states. In this ongoing project, Perceptual Isolation, I explore the interplay of anxiety, trauma, and consciousness.
I regularly experience sleep paralysis, which involves hallucinatory dreams that feel very real and sensorial. During these nightmares, I’m physically paralyzed so I can’t move. Even after I wake up it’s hard to tell what was real and what was a dream. With this series, I’m trying to describe that sense of suspension between waking and sleeping.
The name of this series, Perceptual Isolation, comes from a type of sensory deprivation where, instead of eliminating all sensorial input, you overwhelm one sense and it “turns off” the other senses. Most of these images were made during the Covid pandemic, which was a kind of sensory deprivation as my work and contact with other people stopped. During this time my anxiety felt so pronounced that it almost muted my other emotions.
When I make these images, I photograph myself and work almost exclusively in my apartment. I try to drop into a place of anxiety and push myself to some mental limit where I can reenact memories, fantasies, and nightmares. My process is very performative, and I’ve been deeply influenced by feminist performance artists Ana Mendieta and Carolee Schneemann, who used their bodies as a stage for exploring trauma and emotional release.
