The bedroom space is a highly private environment in which only those permitted may enter. These areas are decorated as cluttered and colorful or as minimalist as the dweller wishes. The bedroom showcases a person’s personality to the absolute fullest, filled with objects of love and memory. The bedroom is especially significant for queer people as these are of the few spaces in which their gender and sexuality can be safely explored. However, what happens when this safe space becomes a nightmare?

Pillow Talk Retrograde explores the bedroom as a terrorizing environment. While the bedroom is a safe space, it can easily become a monstrous entity. The anxieties and fears of a queer person can exacerbate into an uncontrollable spiral. Through the use of small monitors, I work to showcase these intimate moments of panic, dissociation, and depersonalization as if peaking through a window. Each fabric depicted was chosen by my participants as a texture that calls to them. The fabrics act as the growth of anxieties overtaking my actors. With the addition of highly saturated colors and jittery movement, my actors’ slow descent into dread and dissociation within their bedroom begins.