Kaylenne Santiago

My series is a response to how trauma can lead to escapism. Through my works, I wanted to show how the need to escape stems from the fear of reality. Escapism comes in different forms, but can lead down the same path of untreated mental illness. To do this, I created two characters and through their struggles, they experience how unaddressed trauma progressively gets worse. In the first three works, a girl with pink pigtails is subjecting herself to escapism through indulgence and isolation, her trauma lingering and slowly consuming her. The rest of the series features another girl who pushes away her wounded “inner child” while in a search of liberation. Like an angel, her younger self is “pure” but only because she is naïve, like a small child. She avoids her past suffering, but only by running away and not processing it.

I used dramatic lighting to achieve a morbid atmosphere, trapping my characters in their suffocating trauma. I experimented with textured brushes to help make some of my pieces feel more surreal or to have a “dream-like” atmosphere, by blending the colors into the background to lose their concrete shape. By doing this, they lose touch with reality and fall deeper in turmoil.