Sleep and Menopause

Sleep and Menopause

Infographic Plant Maps

The Sleep and Menopause collection invites you to embark on a meditative journey into the world of plants and medicine and their complex entanglement with menopause and sleep health.

Insomnia is one of the most disruptive sleep disorders associated with menopausal and perimenopausal symptoms. It is characterized by an inability to fall asleep, an inadequate sleep duration, waking up multiple times during the night, or a combination of all of three. For centuries, herbs have been used to treat and manage these sleep difficulties.

The body of work on display here considers what we might learn from plant behaviour that could benefit our own lives as sensitive, complex, and interconnected beings. Additionally, the collection seeks to reframe the extraction, consumption, and use of plants by refocusing our attention onto our deep and holistic relations with them.

Through a creative assortment of data visualisation, creative writing, and reflective practice, the exhibition aims to review and “reimagine” how medicinal plants are investigated experimentally or clinically for sleep disorders. It also explores the plants’ possible mechanisms of action and active components.

Hover on the images below to zoom in and read the sensory maps, download, or share them.

For an accessible, text-based version of the infographic plant maps, please click here.

The fragmented and multisensory mapping underpinning this work is also supported by the Sleep and Menopause co-production toolkit which you can download below and use to contribute to the exhibition. Our goal is to open further conversations on how plants can be essential allies in the ways we rest and reset our body as well as in how we might learn to pause, reflect, and listen to our body when it is enduring the pressures of lack of sleep and hormonal change.

For an accessible version of the toolkit, please click here.

Contribute to the Exhibition

All the artworks on display are co-produced by Chiara Dellerba in collaboration with project participants, including Ikuko Tsuchiya, Lucy Jane Murphy, and Suzanne, and licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. A special thanks to thanks to Prof Jason Ellis for his expert input on the topic of sleep and the menopause and to the project Research Assistant, Dr James Rákóczi, for his support throughout.

This online exhibition, curated by Chiara Dellerba, is part of the wider Understanding and Reimagining Sleep and Its Disorders project, run in partnership with The Sleep Charity and funded by a Wellcome Trust Research Enrichment Public Engagement Grant led by Dr Diletta De Cristofaro.

To view the other collections in the Reimagining Sleep exhibition, or to download the exhibition catalogue, click on the buttons below.

These works are licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0