Anxiety invited was a seven-foot-tall public sculpture installed at Clifton Park Museum. Rather than depicting anxiety as something internal and private, I chose to give it scale — to allow it to occupy physical space within a civic environment.

The work responded to a simple but persistent observation: we rarely speak openly about anxiety because the moment never feels appropriate. When emotional expression is consistently postponed, it does not disappear — it compresses. By placing anxiety visibly and unapologetically within a public setting, the sculpture disrupted that compression and invited collective acknowledgement.

Around the sculpture, conversations unfolded. Visitors were invited to write anonymous reflections, speak with trained facilitators, or simply stand and recognise something of themselves in the structure before them. The work functioned less as an object and more as a permission space — a temporary environment where emotional complexity could surface without being hurried into resolution.

Through scale, ritual, and collective authorship, Anxiety extended my ongoing inquiry into emotional environments — asking what becomes possible when feelings we are conditioned to suppress are allowed to take up space.