I had been inundated with homesickness for about a month, just having moved to London from Medellin, Colombia. Weirdly enough, I missed the rain back home, and disliked the rain here in London. And then a bathroom in a restaurant had very tropical wallpaper filled with palm trees and philodendrons and monkeys, and I was hit with a wave of homesickness and nostalgia for home. Later that week, I was walking in south west london and when I turned a corner I had a strong feeling of familiarity, as if I recognized where I was and had been there before, but I hadn't. I began questioning that ephemeral feeling we sometimes have when we think we recognize a place, and then get nostalgic...
Drafts of color palette and figures, Acrylic Paint on Canvas
We have a layered cognitive map in our hippocampal formation, like a grid with an overlay of a 3d emotional map on top of it. This neural grid is composed of "grid cells" that are spaced out periodically and modulate their activity according to your location in immediate space like tiles lighting up while you walk over them. This grid is re-used, like a template, every time you inhabit a new space. It maps out where you are and gives you a "sense of space". Interestingly enough, its' not a 2d grid like a gridded notebook in the brain, its a 3d lattice structure of tiles. I chose to reference the neuron's names; "grid cells" with the vertically hanging threads intersecting the horizontal threads coming from the neurons and running off the canvas.
On top of this grid layer we have a type of pyramidal neurons called a Place Cell. These are located in place fields, which correspond to familiar locations - places you've been before and formed memories with sensory and/or emotional associations. Place cells will activate depending on sensory stimuli or episodic memories attached to the place, and the strength of these neural connections is correlated to their proximity in time and space.
Place cells are what give a place the feeling of familiarity.
They're what fill our heads with flashbacks when we turn down a street or walk into a a cafe where we used to go. They hold onto sensory information and emotional experiences and attach them to the place, and thus, they're what make a place a part of our identity. Without them we wouldn't have favorite places, or places we avoid, or the feeling of yearning for a place where you were loved, or the feeling of homesickness.
Feeling of a Place (Detail) , Acrylic Paint and Embroidery Thread on Canvas
See "Feeling of A Place" in Portfolio for details and images of this painting.
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