Behind the Veil of Hypnagogic Sleep, Harvard Medicine

When researching sleep online, I found an article written by Alison Eck for the Fall 2022 issue of Harvard Medical School’s magazine. In a couple past psychology courses, I’ve learned briefly about hypnagogic hallucinations, which can often occur as someone is falling asleep. However, before reading Eck’s article about hypnagogic sleep, I had no idea that this was even considered a type of ‘sleep’. Researchers have been trying to learn more about its relation to a broad range of topics such as nightmares, visual imagery, self-efficacy, and creativity. And from these studies, researchers are currently attempting to create therapeutic solutions for people suffering with PTSD, narcolepsy (in which hypnagogic hallucinations are frighteningly accompanied by sleep paralysis), or nightmare disorder. I recommend reading this article to challenge your own assumptions about sleep and dreams.

Lungiswa Gqunta: Sleep in Witness, 2022 Exhibition

Last year, Cape Town native artist Lungiswa Gqunta unveiled her exhibition Sleep in Witness at the Henry Moor Institute in Leeds, UK as a homage to her South African relatives and as a recognition of the disruption of colonization and apartheid to the culture of the original Black population. She uses materials such as cloth and barbed wire that carry symbolic, emotional meaning, as well as natural materials like earth clay to transform the installation space into dream-like environments that feel ‘alive’ and manipulated by imagined inhabitants. Gqunta’s work for this exhibition was partly inspired by her own dreams, as well as her desire to show viewers how much information is hidden in our dreams, aside from our waking lives.

“Sleep in Witness traces the intangible world of dreams as a space of learning where extraordinary, overlooked and discredited places of knowledge are illuminated”.