My parts don’t usually show up as images. I am on the aphantasic spectrum, which means my mind doesn’t easily generate images. I can call some up with effort, and sometimes memories show up as snapshots. But when I read, I don’t see the setting or the characters in my mind’s eye.
So often when I am inside checking out who’s present, I have the experience of being in a black box theater with a single light in the middle of the stage. Information from my parts emerges into this center area, in ideas or words. My own IFS coach once referred to it as my parts sending emails with signatures, which was a good description.
So I started making art about this absence of imagery that is my experience of my parts in my IFS coaching sessions. In this piece, the overlapping edges in that center area come from the corners of a book; the words are there, waiting in the wings. There is richness, both visual and conceptual, framing this space, as all my parts have depth and nuance even when they are unseen.
