INCIDENTALOMAS
2024
The human bodymind has a remarkable capacity to conceal painful memories from our conscious awareness. It locks away fragments of experiences too overwhelming to process, isolating them in vaults buried deep within the psyche, where they remain, quietly festering in the darkness. In Incidentalomas, I illuminate these hidden spaces, using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to reveal a scatter of lesions accidentally discovered in the soft tissues of my brain.
In each video, the intricate structures of my head and neck emerge millimeter by millimeter from a solid black background. Abnormal hyperintensities appear in the white matter—the delicate network of nerve fibers connecting neurons and enabling communication across the brain. False-colored in a cool monochromatic blue, these lesions come sharply into focus and vanish just as quickly, flickering through the scan as it unfolds.
How many of these lesions are there? What caused them to form, and how long have they been there? Each video offers a distinct anatomical perspective, looping the scan thirty-three times to evoke the thirty-three years that preceded their discovery.
This work represents the continual process of unlocking those vaults stored in the depths of my unconscious. By casting light into the darkest corners and facing what has long been concealed, the festering wounds begin to heal and integrate. What remains is a constellation of scars—evidence that the bodymind does not forget the past.