Larain Briggs

My work explores how symbolic image-making can contribute to processes of healing, individuation, and the renewal of meaning in an increasingly fragmented world.

Working across painting, drawing, film, digital media, assemblage, and installation, my practice explores trauma, dissociation, fragmentation, and the instability of meaning. Inspired by Carl Jung and psychoanalytic theory, through intuitive, process-led methods, I investigate how symbolic images emerge from unconscious processes and how creative practice can facilitate psychological transformation.

My doctoral research is motivated by concerns about the growing mental health crisis and the wider social conditions that contribute to it. I investigate how trauma fragments identity and how symbolic image-making can facilitate the externalisation and integration of unconscious material. I am particularly interested in addressing social fragmentation and the loss of meaning in contemporary life.

While these conditions form the context for my work, my practice remains autobiographical, rooted in the symbolic and psychological dimensions of human experience. Drawing on Jungian psychology, alchemical transformation, and contemporary trauma theory, my work examines how symbolic image-making externalises unconscious material, creating space for reflection, integration, and transformation. Meaning emerges through the process of making.

Across media, fragments recur, dissolve, and reconfigure, resisting singular narratives and inviting viewers into spaces of ambiguity, reflection, and imaginative participation.