During traumatic incidents, paramedics are known to carry bright, heavy orange coverings that they call shock blankets, in order to ensure the warmth of their patient as they go into shock. Shock Blankets is a piece that borrows this object and embroiders into it what some might not refer to as trauma. In response to my metal piece, Colour Me Ungrateful, I attempt to take the silenced words and put them on an object that carry the words’ magnitude and weight.
 

While there is no clear definition of what a trauma really is, many people would not associate the experience of being a refugee or an immigrant in a foreign county as a traumatic experience. “You have just arrived to the land of new beginnings. What is there to hate?” they would say and while there is some truth in fulfilling that sense of escapism and arriving to a safer shelter, the fact of the matter is, that one can never truly leave that lack of belonging behind. Escaping a country from war or lack of opportunities does not mean that there was always a search for the greener side. Rather it was a situation of one being the lesser of the two evils not a better haven. The sentences embroidered into the fleece, speak of that struggle; of that quiet determination to exist while being stifled and yet somehow express the trauma anyway.