Drawing upon her experience as a neurodivergent woman, Holly-Rose O’Connor’s work aims to explore transcendence of the neurodivergent existence between the material and immaterial world. She achieves this through combining soft pastel colours, flowing textures and delicate painting techniques with rigid two dimensional materials that accompany her intimate dreamscape installations. For O’Connor, daydreams are the ultimate expression of hope, and allow room for anticipatory illumination, in which our desires provide direction towards a brighter future. Daydreams also provide refuge from a material reality that inherently rejects neurodivergent existence, wherein harmless vehicles of hope become maladaptive coping mechanisms; something that the artist has struggled with for much of her life. Her multidisciplinary practice allows her to explore ethereal worlds inspired by early childhood fiction and theatrical scene-setting, while also considering “masking” as a performative armour that allows neurodivergent people to “pass” under the neurotypical gaze.