This piece is a deeply personal exploration of the relationship between physical environments and internal emotions. Inspired by a period in high school when I experienced a profound depressive state, the work uses my high school bedroom as both a literal and symbolic backdrop. During that time, my room became a chaotic, overwhelming space—an unlivable mess of laundry, trash, and forgotten belongings. It mirrored the clutter and despair within me, a stark representation of a mental state I felt powerless to escape.

To create this piece, I used a photograph of my room from 2020, tracing and distorting every element of the mess to reflect my warped mental state. The composition intentionally blurs the line between reality and perception, inviting viewers into the disorienting and suffocating space I inhabited both physically and mentally. At the center of the piece is a phone held in bloody, cut hands. This imagery reflects technology’s destructive role during that time in my life. My phone, an iPhone 7 with a cracked screen, became both my escape and identity source, offering the illusion of connection while causing physical harm. The phone’s shattered glass would cut into my fingers and face—painful yet tolerated, much like the other harmful coping mechanisms I clung to during that period.

The phone symbolizes a duality: a source of pain and dependence, a lifeline I couldn’t let go of even as it hurt me. In the composition, this object takes center stage, overshadowing the overwhelming mess in the background. This disconnect—where the viewer sees misplaced priorities while the figure focuses solely on the phone—captures the internal fixation that defined my experience.

The title, Aren’t You Suffocating in Here?, comes from a poem I wrote during the darkest point of my life. I sought to translate the raw emotion of those words into the visual language of this piece, merging my reflections on how physical places and mental spaces can intertwine and magnify one another. This work is both a confrontation of my past and a reminder of the resilience it took to move forward.