Oxytocin Pillows
02 January 2025
I cannot forget this essay by Laura Crucianelli written for aeon magazine (titled "The need to touch")... I suppose it's less the text in its entirety than the studies presented & the following conclusion: "affective touch and oxytocin might boost the process that keeps us grounded to a physical body".
This painting was concocted during a terrible period of tremendous loneliness enforced by painful dreams. Plastered to my bed I would crave an impossible comfort. Digital skeuomorphism harkens our tactile memory [interpolate Metaphors we Live By], though by now I believe that has evolved. The sequence of rounded hearts symbolise digital human contact--what social language instagram likes convey, it is not dissimilar to a word. This symbolic world is where I sought synthetic comfort.