Growing Pains (2025)

Growing Pains captures the unbearable intimacy of transformation. A woman collapses onto the ground, her body arched between agony and rapture as black tendrils erupt from her back. The forms, half-organic, half-fluid, twist upward like living extensions of her suffering. The lighting, steeped in ochre and shadow, isolates her figure within a space that feels both sacred and sickly.

⤷ In this work, Cox visualises metamorphosis as violence. The body is no longer a container but a battlefield, ruptured by what it was never meant to hold. Unlike traditional depictions of spiritual ascension, this transformation offers no transcendence, only the raw inevitability of becoming. The tendrils are not parasites or invaders; they are her, the physical manifestation of every suppressed instinct, desire, and grief now breaching the skin.

The title, Growing Pains, reads almost tenderly against the horror of the image. It reminds us that pain is often the language of change. The figure’s posture—a blend of collapse and surrender—embodies that duality. She is suffering, but she is also birthing something beyond her control. Cox’s chiaroscuro dramatises this tension, bathing her skin in divine light while letting the shadows claim what blooms from her spine.

This piece speaks to a central theme of The Damnation Project: the reclamation of monstrosity. Growth is not made beautiful here; it’s made honest. To evolve, one must sometimes tear oneself open.