Nightmares are something we all know a familiar sense of dread when we awaken in the middle of the night, some worse than others but in adult life they should lessen or for some near enough become negligent to the other dreams or nothingness of sleep that we experience. Though, for some nightmares become second nature to them, waking them up terrified or reliving certain experiences that render them completely unable to sleep and sometimes unable to distinguish reality from the nightmares themselves. ‘My Shadow It Speaks To Me’ serves to show the ways that people with frequent nightmares often see reality or nightmares, being unphased by most and terrified by others, it is a dream-like sequence with projected images onto the skin mixed with images of liminal spaces that break that line between our minds’ creations and what is actually real.
What is on the outside can often be reflected in our minds’ eye creating often disturbing images and otherwise unexplainable situations. These nightmares are a collection of El’s own nightmares since they suffer from frequent nightmares, El say they personally never remember any dreams they only remember the nightmares that haunt their sleeping hours. These nightmares often consist of things, people and places that are familiar to them, twisting them into, often times, terrifying or disturbing events like parasites, or scratching themselves until they bleed uncontrollably. Sometimes their nightmares are even posed as drawings, in familiar styles they have seen in the media or from their peers, making it harder to calm themselves down or distinguish it from the ‘real world’ when they eventually wake up.
This work is not about glamorizing or normalizing these nightmares; it’s about their want to show them as they are and for what they are and most of all how they affect El personally or how they don’t. Whether that’s insomnia, paranoia or a disgusting feeling that sticks with them all day from being able to see those scenes in their head whether those images are real or not because to El, they feel and look just as real as the world around them.
