Subway

 

 

Anxiety is irrational, pervasive, and sometimes surreal. 

In this project, I attempt to convey my personal experience of anxiety to a larger audience by creating a common feeling or circumstance that I felt would resonate with those with anxiety and those without – the irrational feeling that everyone is looking at you on the subway. This animated image is meant to convey the surreal and unnerving aspects of self-consciousness, as well as the experience of questioning one’s perception of reality. As a place where common courtesy dictates that one ought to mind one’s own business, catching the attention – and possibly ire – of an entire subway car provides the sort of uncomfortable distortion that I feel represents the experience of anxiety. There is a lack of surety about whether you are truly drawing everyone’s gaze or it is just your imagination. 

My goal was to try and induce a small fragment of those feelings in the viewer, to better communicate the essence of my anxiety to others.