Helimlich: My Dear Little Grotto
Hide me. Don’t look at me. Just let me lie here. Let me curl away under the comfort of my own security. I don’t want to leave here, and I can’t. It hurts me, and I’m just too tired. If I leave, rip the covers off, then I will feel it. I’ll have to confront it. Let gravity pull the fat down as it heaves. A heavy mass that consumes me. But if I stay here, I don’t have to confront—I don’t have to face it, face myself. Face those heavy, fatty extrusions weighing me down. Filling out, rounded clots, a squishy, pudgy suit. But in this space, I am at peace, cocooned in comfort, swaddled up, like a newborn. I don’t have to think, think about what lies beyond the bedroom door. Here I can keep the lingering voices at bay. With effort, I try not to listen—here I can sleep, rest and rot away, here I don’t have to admit, I don’t have to return.
This artwork fathoms the disorienting psychology of Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). It focuses on the resulting isolation and depressive state, which compels sufferers to hide from a perceived public gaze due to a profound belief that they are grotesque. Shown through abstract sculptures, the piece visualises the psychological distortion of the body—how the mind abstracts reality by fixating on a minor or non-existent flaw, often unperceived.
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