Cyanotype photographs on fabric. Documentation by Rita TaylorNap studies explores spaces between waking and dreaming through alternative photographic processes and animation.
This ongoing work investigates my experiences with narcolepsy, which I was diagnosed with in 2014. In 2025 I began explored ways to record the time I spend each day napping—an activity I’ve been medically prescribed. While in residence at the Banff Center, I made large-scale cyanotype photographs on old bedsheets by napping outside for 30-40 minutes in the afternoon sun. While I laid still, the sun moved across the sky, casting light on the chemistry and creating the deep blue print, giving shape to the time I spend dreaming.
The cyanotypes have soft edges, abstracting my body and creating sometimes unrecognizable shapes. Physiologically, the line between being asleep and being awake is blurred for me, an experience that affects the nature of my dreaming. The cyanotype photograms offer apt expressions of that haziness. They are grounded in the presence of my body, but they’re also intimate and otherworldly—centering the specific separation from the world beyond our physical boundaries that we experience while dreaming.
I kept many of the large prints intact, and others I cut and sewed into long strips of white and blue. I experimented with animating the pieces into a textile animation to create a constant pushing horizon, coming in and out of focus, bringing movement to the still photographs. Narcolepsy is thought to be caused by a lack of brain chemistry that regulates wakefulness, leading to a constant pressure to sleep and the encroachment of REM sleep (dream sleep) into all parts of the day. The patterns of cyanotype bleeding into fabric imitate brainwaves, calling to mind the internal landscape of sleep and dreams—something that we still know very little about. The softer sequences have a more lulling, meditative quality to them. Both are reminiscent of the mountains, stars, and skies of certain dream worlds.
With support from the Manitoba Arts Council and the Winnipeg Arts Council.
Creating a long-exposure (45 minute) cyanotype on fabric on the Banff Centre in grounds in February. Documentation by Matt Horseman.
Close-up of Nap study 3, cyanotype photogram on fabric of body napping. The heat and moisture from bare skin modified the reaction and created a sense of dimension in the hand.
Cyanotype printed fabric installed to show the accumulation of time napping and fabric “filmstrips” hung from the ceiling.
Cyanotype on fabric andanimation installed in the Project Space at the Banff Centre.
Experiments in animating cyanotype printed fabric “filmstrips” to create looping horizons that explore the edges of waking and dreaming.