Vridhhi Chaudhry

Unlearning an Uninvited Sensory Language

Unlearning an Uninvited Sensory Language is a healing journey where I unlearn my trauma memories, by revisiting them and undoing them. Like an uninvited guest, trauma made itself home in my body, except I learned to live with this guest. When trauma happens, we emphasize the damage because we despise it but what we forget to acknowledge is how our bodies learn to bloom in all that gloom. And eventually, I learned to grow with it. Words and language lack the capacity to describe the heaviness and intensity of my trauma. As I draw upon my lived memories and transfer them into masks and paper dolls, I translate the sensory language of trauma and unlearn this uninvited sensory language. This research and making encompass the parameters of what it is to heal as a survivor and victim of sexualized violence and experiencing the death of loved ones. Unlearning an uninvited sensory language is an exhibition, and master’s research paper, that is shaped by auto-ethnographic praxis, arts-based research, and performative art.

 2022