Rooms of the Mind

The work Rooms of the Mind is a three-dimensional textile inspired by the diversity of the mind’s responses throughout life, by John Locke’s philosophical thought and by the approach of cognitive neuroscience.

Its title evokes the construction of a set of “rooms” in which we store experiences and memories. These experiences and memories are stored together with the feelings and emotions they generate. Each time the door to one of these rooms is opened, they provoke a personal or social response, different in each person and shaped by those stored feelings and emotions.

John Locke’s philosophical thought leads me to imagine the mind as a cluster of empty rooms that gradually become filled. According to Locke, through consciousness, sensations are elaborated and transformed into knowledge, memories and emotions. In his work, he defines this as the “ideas of reflection of the senses”.

Reflection.

There are rooms we enter regularly and other rooms we avoid entering. In these latter rooms, we have not been able, or have not wanted, to enter and “put things in order”, because feelings of anguish are capable of manipulating the state of rational consciousness.

The grids of the three-dimensional textile represent these “rooms” that are gradually built and “furnished” with sensations and memories. The rooms are empty in order to invite you to recreate your own “rooms”, according to the memories you hold in each one of them.

These rooms are connected through elongated formations that recall neurons and their functioning: the way they are linked through electrical connections that shape behaviour.