Our event exploring the scents of love and loss took place at Barracks Lane Community Garden on 20 April, in partnership with the mental health charity Oxfordshire Mind, as part of Oxford Brookes’ Think Human Festival of the Humanities and Social Sciences

As an artist who spends time exploring how we use our imagination to understand our bodily experience of health and disease, the opportunity to be involved in a project that focuses on heartbreak as an embodied experience is very exciting. I started working in glass after a previous unrelated career, and as soon as I began making artwork, I was inspired to create pieces about health, illness and physiology.  As my practice developed, I became more and more interested in how we imagine the interior workings of our bodies and whether that has an impact on how we experience our lives from other perspectives. 

I am an interdisciplinary artist in London who works with creative writing and visual art to explore what it means to be human. In my practice, I weave together documentary and imaginary worlds to explore the ordinary-extraordinary experiences of humans and the natural world we belong to. I’m interested in health and our relationship to nature; in what moves us and how we make meaning; in how engaging art can help us process difficult experiences and teach us about ourselves. My work is grounded in real experience but hopes to provide a poetic perspective on life and living.

What happens when the excitement, happiness, and comfort of romantic love have departed, leaving a trail of emotional devastation in their wake? When this crisis is at its most acute, what does it mean to suffer from a broken heart?