Aura
Caves Gallery, 2026

Aura is an exhibition based on the phenomenon of migraine with aura.

It explores written accounts, the affected senses and the philosophical aspect of something visual that is looked through, not at.

In the gallery a film is projected onto float glass that has been melted and sanded by Laddawan, one side is smooth like water and the other is grainy which catches the light of the projector. This screen sits alongside forty handmade glass camera lenses that have been melted, slumped and embedded with Japanese seed beads. The moving images that play are of Laddawan’s life during her experience of migraine, which began after giving birth. The footage has been shot through the lenses she has made to visually mirror the different visual effects of migraine aura, displaying how it can effect ones vision and how the disability can take away precious life moments.

The abalone shell is re-thought in three ways: the actual shell, plaster moulds and glass imprints. The Abbalone shell represents Laddawan’s painful auditory response to sound when experiencing migraine aura - loud sounds can cause Laddawan to vomit. The way the Abalone shell constructs its shell over time physically mirrors how a migraine aura travels across the human brain — it builds its shell outward from a singular point (the apex) in a shifting, expanding spiral. The Abalone shell grows in distance, concentric and jagged lines. The shell’s internal structure has sharp, interlocking sig-zag patterns and stepped configurations known as ‘fault lines’. Migraines aura is caused by Corticol Spreading Depression, which is a slow moving wave of cellular depolarisation - which is an electrical wave typically originating from a single focal point in the occipital lobe (visual cortex) and spreads outwards across the folded surface of the brain. The abalone creates a physical blueprint of Corticol Spreading Depression at a much slower rate.

The stepped process of the shell represents how Laddawan thinks of pain throughout history - the shell (magic, myths, supernatural), the mould (modern medicine) and the glass (something between the two).

The amber colour represents Laddawan’s aura colour. She see’s amber spots in her vision. Whereas others can see lemon yellow or cobalt blue - as described in Stephanie Cobon’s writing piece.

Throuhgout Laddawan’s research she did a public call out for people to describe their auras and she receives 60 written responses - with these responses Laddawan creates camera lenses inspired by some of the visual descriptions of migraine aura.

Throughout Laddawan’s pain, with the help on another, she has realised that even in great moments of pain, art can serve a way out. Now when Laddawan experiences migraines, she thinks of the beautiful writing, the shell, the aura colours and this exhibtion. Which has transformed it from something terrifying to something creative.

Moulds of abalone shells sit on the window ledge to try to give beauty to the painful effect that Laddawan experiences with migraine - with their iridescent mother-of-pearl/nacre insides and ear shape - in that she throws up when hearing loud sounds. Some of the blue abalone shells have been pierced as a nod to the theories of how one can ease migraine - one of these theories is piercing the ear in particular places and through acupuncture dots.

This exhibition is a nod to the ways that art can form suffering into something bearable or interesting. And through the loss of fiction and mythology, the migraine aura has lost this positivity. Not as a shame to modern medicine but as a way to have both beauty that makes things bearable and the scientific discoveries.

Huge thank you to Madeline Cordone for helping me with the glass aspect of this project - a real joy and relaxed fun way to work and talk.
Essays by Lucien Alperstein, Stefanie Cobon, Isabella Hone-Saunders, Roslyn Orlando and Camille Laddawan.

Film

Lenses

Shells