Defrag Me is the result of over a year spent in hospitals and therapists’ offices. For most of 2023, I struggled to focus on any task, let alone make art. The feelings of pain, helplessness, and isolation that mental illness can cause is difficult to fully express in either words or imagery.
A breakthrough came when I found a way to channel my pain and comprehend my experience through art. Personality disorders can take root during traumatic childhoods, although the impact of past abuse is sometimes not apparent until a crisis. This leaves the traumatized person and their loved ones to figure out what in childhood laid the foundations for the disorder. Defrag Me depicts this healing process through an interactive visual that evokes childhood: the puzzle.
Each piece is an abstract visual representation of self-fragmentation that also functions as a puzzle that users can solve. Ranging from 3x3 to 8x8 grids, the puzzles consist of an image, fragmented into tiles, that can be reassembled by clicking on the tiles. The tiles slide with exponentially accelerating speed and are accompanied by a range of sound frequencies, creating a physical, multisensory approximation of tactile play and a subtle sense of organic chaos. I invite collectors to replicate the childhood pastime of puzzle-solving to help them reflect on the relationship between their past and present selves. Solving the puzzle is a metaphor for making sense of childhood trauma and easing the toll that it continues to take into our adulthoods.
Repressed pain can result in severe degrees of self-fragmentation, manifesting in such conditions as depersonalization and dissociation. Because I believe that everyone carries a degree of personal self-fragmentation, each grid that is 5x5 and larger is “personalized” with a subtle overlay of concentric circles. These circles resemble fingerprints, a symbol of identity. They also function as hints for solving the puzzle. By tapping below the grid, hitting “h” on their keyboard, or using their number pads, collectors can enable their hints. When hints are visible, collectors can align the separate tiles following the circular pattern of the hints, completing the puzzle. Some of us can heal their personal fragmentation on their own; some of us simply choose to live with the fractures. But many of us will need help from a loved one or a professional to reassemble ourselves and our relationships with others. The hints of Defrag Me symbolize those who aid us on that journey.
A solved puzzle represents a defragmented self. The title of this artwork, Defrag Me, references the act of defragmentation. In my case, I reached back into my artistic past to process the emotional labors that I have had to undertake over the last years. The tiles of Defrag Me originate from my first project on ArtBlocks, Libertad Parametrizada. I cut the images of Libertad Parametrizada into pieces, scattered them into tiles, and then began to reassemble them into an entirely new artwork. Reflection, reassembly, and rebirth—this is the process of Defrag Me.
