Trauma as Labyrinth or Rhizome?

Fig. 1. Walid Raad, Translator’s introduction: Pension art in Dubai, 2012, paper cutouts on wall, two-channel video (color, silent, looped), dimensions variable. © Walid Raad. Digital Image © 2015 The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

Reflection on Labyrinth and Rhizome: On the Work of Walid Raad by Christoph Chwatal

https://stedelijkstudies.com/journal/labyrinth-and-rhizome-on-the-work-of-walid-raad/

I find the comparison between the labyrinth and the rhizome particularly interesting. In relation to my own practice, they offer two very different ways of understanding healing from trauma, wound and pain. A labyrinth is a maze: It suggests confusion, complexity, and the possibility of getting lost. A labyrinth has a structure: an entrance, a center, and an exit. I realized that I used to think of healing more like a labyrinth, imagining it as a difficult journey towards resolution, where frustration arises from not being able to find the way out or from not arriving at a clear answer quickly enough. A rhizome, by contrast, is more like underground roots or mycelium: It has no single center, no clear beginning or end, and it spreads in multiple directions. If one part is cut, it continues elsewhere. To understand healing as a rhizome is to move away from seeing it as a maze with one answer. It does not move neatly toward closure or a stable narrative, but grows through ongoing change, relapse, adaptation and transformation.

Chwatal, Christoph. “Labyrinth and Rhizome: On the Work of Walid Raad.” Stedelijk Studies. Accessed March 19, 2026. https://stedelijkstudies.com/journal/labyrinth-and-rhizome-on-the-work-of-walid-raad/