Kunj – Beauty of Neurons
Preferred Name
Kunj
Legal Name
Kunj Shah
Contact Email
k1bellport23@gmail.com
Age
19
Gender Expression
female, she/her
Which student are you?
College Student (The World)
Name of School
Lehigh University
Grade / Year in School
sophomore/rising junior
Location (City, State/Province, Country)
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA
If you identify with an ethnicity or culture(s), which one or ones do you identify with?
Indian-Asian: gujarati
What is the name of your legal guardian/parent (if under 18)?
Please provide contact information for your legal guardian/parent (if under 18)
What are your social media accounts (TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook)?
IG:@kunj.sbb
Please select type of project you are entering
Visual Art
What is the title of your project?
Beauty of Neurons
Please tell us about your submission (maximum 600 words)
I take great passion in being able to convey science concepts into art- particularly neuroscience concepts. As I sat down to create a submission for this contest, I was already working on a piece, Beauty of Neurons. It dawned on me that the science behind this piece is exactly how I'd want to go about breaking patriarchy, quite literally. So I decided to make the piece literally showcase an explosion of dendrites in a process known as dendritic depolarization. What happens in this process is an action potential burst discharges "internally" and causes neurons to 'burst.'
You might be wondering how this connects to breaking patriarchy- it's because neurons can only physically burst if stimulated or manipulated pharmacologically. Patriarchy is so toxic that it causes women to question their positions, their emotions, and confidence in their daily lives. It swallows women whole and causes them to mentally break down and go through phases of self conscienceless that no person should ever have to go through. So in that sense, patriarchy is what exerts pressure and negative thoughts on women and this causes some of them to feel the need to manipulate themselves to “fit in.” Or this manipulation is what women yield into submission of— when they can’t take it any longer, they burst. So, my thought process behind this was that the "vines" of neurons and dendrites going around the champagne bottle reached such pressure on them exerted from the shaken champagne bottle that they had no option left but to explode. Thus, the explosion represented shows breakage of the glass bottle and the dendrites and neurons becoming loose as pressure is relieved from them. In a way, it depicts freedom. So breaking through to patriarchy here was represented by a literal explosion which left the bottle (male oppressors) feeling the same pressure- this resulted in the bottle cracking and also exploding- that the oppressed (neurons and dendrites) were feeling.
