Artist Statement

This is the space epilepsy often occupies.

A sudden absence. A pause in knowing.

Rückkehrunruhe—a word for the moment after returning, when something vivid begins to dissolve. As if the mind had already decided it was a dream and quietly started erasing it.  John Koenig in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

This is the space epilepsy often occupies.  A sudden absence. A pause in knowing.    The disorientation of moving from unconsciousness to awareness, from non-reality back into the world. What returns is partial—fragments of memory, sensation, time. Regaining composure feels like assembling a puzzle with missing pieces, images often incomplete.

Formed from the German rückkehren (to return) and Unruhe (restlessness), Rückkehrunruhe names the unease of re-entry—the lingering instability of coming back.

 Ténébreux (French) speaks to shadow: something brooding, obscured, difficult to name, enigmatic (mystérieux). A darkness not of absence, but of depth—hidden, interior, unresolved.

Epilepsy is often described as a hidden disability. It is lived largely in the shadows, shaped by silence, misconceptions, and stigma. Despite scientific advances, much of the experience remains unseen, unexplained—felt internally, rarely witnessed, and not easily articulated.

Together, these two pieces inhabit the spaces between presence and absence, clarity and obscurity—where meaning fluctuates, memory fades, and identity is slowly and silently pieced together.

Dr. Thompson-Dobkin is a neurologist and the founder of the Hidden Truths Project. As the mother of an adult son who has lived with epilepsy for over twenty years, her work emerges from an intimate understanding of what it means to live between visibility and concealment.

Art