mental health – Shaun Levin

I Walked All the Way Here

Concertina book Closed – 17.5cm x 9.5cm (6.8″ x 3.7″), Open – 202cm x 9.5cm (79.5″ x 3.7″)

Materials Colour pencils

Every year, millions of people undertake perilous journeys to reach safety, by foot or in boats across seas. In 2023, 280,000 people set out to cross the Meditteranean Sea towards Europe. Many did not survive. We speak of their unimaginable hardships, their unimaginable dangers, their unimaginable will. What if we imagine the fate of those who drown and what becomes of their bodies? I Walked All the Way Here is a meditation on the people who did not survive the journey and on the importance of listening to the people who have made it to our shores.

As a great-grandchild of people who left Europe by ship in the 1890s to find safety in Africa, I am acutely aware of the complex movement of people between continents. The journey of my ancestors was shaped by different circumstances and privileges in moving from Europe to Africa, yet at the heart of both sea journeys lies a shared, profound desire to survive.

Text reads FRONT Can I come in? Please. “Don’t you miss the sea?” “Who? Me? I’ve seen enough of the sea.” REVERSE Days of floating until we became food to fish and oysters. Our dreams are now in you. The nightmares you created, birthed, the longings we carried with us. Listen to those who’ve reached the shore. They can tell you all you need to know about yourselves. Let them welcome you to the haven of their dinner table. BACK COVER The night reminds us: In our dreams, nothing is wasted. Our memories are worse than reality. Our bliss bleeds into our days.

The Misophonic Experience: a poster that’s a one-page graphic story

Edition of 250

70cm x 100cm (27.5″ x 39″)

€25, order copy

People chewing (sometimes dogs, too), teaspoons tinkling in cups, mobile phone conversations, air-conditioners humming, sloppy kissing, dogs barking, tuneless whistling, wall-clocks ticking and ticking and ticking – just some of the sounds that drive a person with misophonia to distraction. It’s a condition that impacts around 10% of the population where certain sounds trigger an intense emotional and physical reaction – anything from irritation to panic to rage. The misophonia sufferer’s extreme response can seem irrational, but to them, to us, the world is a place that must be navigated to avoid certain sounds.

The Misophonic Experience depicts that all-encompassing hypersensitivity to everyday sounds. How do you put the entire world of an experience onto a single map? Starting with ancient cartography and a close look at various mappa mundi, maps that showed what was considered the known world at the time, I set out to make The Misophonic Experience a visual representation of a pervasive auditory experience. Triggering sounds are everywhere – on the bus, in the cinema, walking down the street, in a café, at home – and although the anguish is often unseen, the sounds and situations lurking in the misophonia sufferer’s life are sharply visual. The Misophonic Experience map shows what that world looks like.

The separate panels and text on the right side of the map illustrate how we find relief from those sounds: through physical activities, through being in nature, antidotes to the sense of entrapment misophonia can induce, and through seeking out sounds that are pleasing to the ear.

Art has always made the unseen visible, been a way to externalise what overwhelms, terrifies, and exhilarates. For me, creativity is a way to represent the emotional and physical subtleties and extremes of living with chronic invisible conditions, and through The Misophonic Experience map to recreate a multi-sensory, immersive experience that mirrors a feeling of no escape from triggering sounds.

€25, order copy

A little process gif to show the creation of The Misophonia Experience map from pencil sketch, through to inking, digitisation and colouring in with Procreate.