Flat B
Flat B
A series of video works centred around my recovery from borderline personality disorder.
This is a 5 year's (2019-2025) worth of footage compiled into streams of raw video, episodic formats, and documentary-style works, combining animation, fragments of everyday living, and my cat. The footage is messy, lo-fi, and very real.
It focuses on paranoia, OCD and intrusive thoughts — checking my oven exactly eight times, convincing myself I have to think of something positive or something bad might come true. It follows taking medication, mania, depression, bed-rotting, and, through all of this, healing. And singing to my cat.
The Four Women.
The Four Parts of Me.
Trying to Integrate
This work became about giving those four women form — through film, performance, and visual storytelling. They each got their own body, look, and emotional arc. I started therapy and group therapy alongside this — trying, really trying, to pull the threads together.
There was a chest of drawers in my room that broke the moment I got it. I could use the top and bottom drawers, but the middle three were jammed together, stuck in place. I still have it, five years on. That broken furniture became a kind of metaphor — most things in my flat half-worked or didn’t work at all. I kept it all, right up until I couldn’t, and then I’d throw everything out. It was always all or nothing.
I’d deep-clean my flat, then destroy it or neglect it completely. The flat became a mirror for how I saw and treated myself.
Drawing My Flat
This work was a life-sized drawing of my flat, recreated in a studio space in Holborn, London. It became an installation where Cats of Tottenham – Series 2 was screened. My flat — which had held my breakdowns, recovery, and daily survival — now sat in a public-facing studio on the high street, open for anyone passing by.
Sleeping Series
A series of video works showing me sleeping. Sleep became a huge part of recovery — but also a side effect of the antipsychotics. The drowsiness, the fog, the strange loss of time. It’s about that, too.
Video – My Cat
Video is the name of my cat — and the name of a video series I made about her. She arrived at the start of my recovery and became a kind of emotional mirror. Some clips show me annoying her, others show her pushing back. It felt symbolic — that push-pull dynamic, my longing to be loved constantly, and the way I took it personally when she just needed her own space. But at the same time she was just a little cat with her own autonomy and life-it wasn't about me, which was helpful to always have in the background. My best friend calls this “bigger cat stuff going on.” In other words she was not an extension of me.
At my old job, they used to say “relationships are the treatment,” and I agreed. Everything comes back to our early connections. But I never felt like one cohesive person. There were too many versions of me, each one in a different kind of relationship. So this work is about starting small — with one cat, one room, one thread of connection. It was about building a relationship where none of the parts had to be hidden.
The Sims / Flat B
I recreated my flat — or something close to it — using the free version of The Sims 4. In this world, I had a job as an amateur entertainer during the day, and at night I could make art and sleep. I tried to give myself a routine, a simulation of stability. I felt like I was falling behind in life, so I made a version of life where I wasn’t.
But it was through the boring parts — the repetition, the daily upkeep — that I started to notice I actually felt better. Cutting out alcohol. Doing yoga. Creating an evening routine. These tiny, unglamorous changes were what pulled me through. But to do any of it, I had to cosplay as a well person. Pretend first. Then act. Then maybe feel.
The hardest part was the 5PM anxiety — a wave of nervous energy that hit like clockwork every evening. It was sharp and physical, like a jolt in the chest. I’d do anything to avoid it: go out, drink, sleep around, distract myself. But that wasn’t sustainable. So I started forcing myself to stay in and do something good.
But it was through the boring parts — the repetition, the daily upkeep — that I started to notice I actually felt better. Cutting out alcohol. Doing yoga. Creating an evening routine. These tiny, unglamorous changes were what pulled me through. But to do any of it, I had to cosplay as a well person. Pretend first. Then act. Then maybe feel.
Singing to My Cat
Another series of works came out of this — me singing to my cat. Mostly Katy Perry songs, over and over. It reminded me of being younger, before everything fractured. Just me, my cat, a karaoke mic, and a few pop songs that knew how to hold space for a feeling.
