ABSTRACT

REFRAMING IV is a collaborative, practice-based installation co-designed with people living with Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) through a series of facilitated workshops led by Rachel Fitzpatrick, developed in partnership with Brain Injury Matters, Belfast. The work employs a participatory methodology in which contributors create folded ‘origami’ brain forms that are collectively assembled into large-scale sculptural configurations. These repeated, hand-made elements function as a shared visual language through which experiences of trauma, rehabilitation, identity and change following brain injury are communicated.

The installation comprises over 1,000 individually produced components, made by participants with diverse physical and cognitive impairments. In this cascading iteration, the suspended arrangement forms the silhouette of a single figure living with ABI. Graduated sequences of colour evoke personal identity and continuity, while deliberate disruptions within the palette signify traumatic rupture and the non-linear nature of recovery. Colour choices were collectively negotiated, with participants prioritising bright and saturated tones to foreground positive memory, agency and lived resilience rather than deficit-based narratives.

Exhibited as part of the international exhibition Capacities of Care, curated by Associate Professor Dr Aaron Knochel at the HUB Robeson Art Gallery, Penn State University (USA), REFRAMING IV aligns with care-based and socially engaged research frameworks. It evidences collective making as an act of mutual care, wellbeing exchange and relational knowledge production. The work’s adaptable, site-responsive configuration enables it to be continually re-framed across architectural contexts, extending its capacity to communicate lived experience to participants, families and wider publics, while contributing to contemporary discourse on creative health and participatory arts practice.

Images Courtesy of Penn State University, USA