Still Becoming

This piece explores the quiet violence of self erasure and the long process of returning to oneself. The figure holding the mask reflects the emotional exhaustion of performing identities shaped by survival, expectation, and the need to be accepted. The work holds space for grief, growth, neurodivergence, healing, and the layered experience of becoming visible to oneself again.

Year: 2026
Medium: Still Becoming

Purpose Statement:

The piece emerged from the realization that I had spent much of my life adapting myself to survive environments that were not built for the way I naturally move through the world. As someone navigating neurodivergence alongside overlapping cultural, emotional, and creative identities, masking became both protection and performance. I learned how to read rooms quickly, soften parts of myself, over explain, stay hyperaware, and shape shift in order to feel understood or accepted.

Over time, that constant adaptation created distance between who I was and who I believed I needed to be.

The act of removing the mask in this work is not presented as a sudden transformation or breakthrough, but as an ongoing process of remembering. Remembering the self that existed before shame, before self minimization, before survival required constant translation. The cosmic textures, flowing color, and layered symbolism reflect the complexity of an internal world that often felt too expansive, emotional, or nonlinear for external expectations.

This work holds space for contradiction. Exhaustion and beauty. Sensitivity and resilience. Grief and becoming.

Rather than portraying healing as perfection, the piece honors the quiet courage of allowing oneself to exist more truthfully; unfinished, evolving, and fully human.