Coping Mechanism was created during a period of profound grief, wrapped up in personal loss and health issues. The stop-motion animation uses the body as a site of psychological struggle. Two red threads emerge from the void of a missing tooth, an intimate reference to my grandfather, a dentist who had just died by suicide. As the audio swells with a heartbeat and laboured breath, the threads multiply into a tangle of red and blue, attempting to envelop an unknown object.

The work traces the impossibility of "fixing" loss. The wound does not heal; it migrates. By the final frame, the gap has shifted from the mouth to the throat, transforming the missing tooth into an exposed trachea. This fluid anatomy reflects how trauma relocates within the body, never fully resolving, but endlessly trying to hold on.

 

The work can be viewed here.