PETA TRANQUILLE 

Aphantasia is a neurological condition where a person cannot voluntarily create mental images. While many people can picture faces, places, or memories in their mind, I can’t visually replay experiences internally. I still remember things, but memory for me is built more through facts, associations, emotions, objects, colours, and context rather than through mental pictures. It took me many years to realise that other people actually “see” imagery in their minds, and that discovery completely changed the way I understood both memory and myself.

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Having Aphantasia has strongly influenced the way I approach artmaking. Much of my work explores systems of remembering rather than literal recollection. Grids, repetition, fragmentation, puzzles, coding, archives, and collected objects often appear throughout my practice as ways of constructing meaning from absence. Photography also plays an important role, as images become evidence of experiences that I cannot internally revisit visually. Rather than recreating memories exactly as they were, I often work through structure, logic, and reconstruction.

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My practice is not about presenting Aphantasia as a deficit, but about exploring an alternative way of understanding memory and perception. The works reflect the tension between what can be recalled, what feels missing, and the methods we develop to hold onto experiences. Through sculpture, drawing, installation, and modular forms, I investigate how memory can still exist powerfully even when it cannot be mentally pictured.