Making Pain Tangible: How Sensory Dimensions Turns Chronic Pain Into Art

Elicia and Casey, guests on the Major Pain Podcast, are pictured here, on this episode where they discuss how their shared experience of chronic pain and disability inspired their artistic collaborative, Sensory Dimensions.

How do you go beyond enduring pain and turn it instead into a transformative artistic experience? Casey and Elicia are the powerhouse behind Sensory Dimensions, a creative collaborative that recontextualizes experiences of chronic pain and disability through music, movement, projection, and tactile art. Their work asks what happens when pain is pushed beyond the silent tragedy of the clinical setting and given new ways to be seen, heard, and felt.

Both Casey and Elicia came to the project through deeply personal experiences with chronic pain. Elicia has trained as a violinist for more than 20 years. At 17, ankylosing spondylitis forced her to reconsider her artistic future. Years of pain, unsuccessful physical therapy, and medical dismissal eventually led to a diagnosis that brought both relief and fear. Casey’s path through dance was repeatedly disrupted by severe muscle spasms, undiagnosed injuries, and other overlapping symptoms that did not fit neatly into a single diagnosis. Eventually, she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and hypermobility. Trying to remain in the world of performance while navigating disability pushed them both to explore other avenues to art, including choreography, production, and accessibility work.

In this episode, Jesse speaks with Casey and Elicia about how their connection to someone with a similar experience changed their approach to their work and bodies. Since collaborating on their masters’ thesis, they have built immersive, inclusive performances, and interactive programs like Paint Your Pain. On stage, they turn pain into sensations that everyone can experience, regardless of disability or predilection. Accessibility is embedded from the beginning: for instance, if an audience member cannot see an element, they may be able to hear or touch it instead.

Through performances like “My Body’s Wake,” Elicia and Casey embrace the unpredictability of disability. They incorporate improvisation that enables them to create a resonant performance every time, even as what their bodies are capable of shifts day to day. For both artists, that shift has changed their definition of chronic pain. Something once private, inconvenient, or shameful has become visible, tangible, and even beautiful. Rather than being the end of the creative process, pain becomes part of the material itself and a catalyst for entirely new ways to create.

Learn more about Sensory Dimensions and their mission to recontextualize chronic pain and disability through art: https://sensorydimensions.godaddysites.com/

Follow Sensory Dimensions on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sensorydimensions/