EMPATHETIC BLOAT
I think my body knew months before the diagnosis.
Imprinted with shadows of alienated intuition
reducing somatic signallings to painful whispers of
internalized
dis
mis
sal.
Frustration builds
as your belly continued to swell with cells d i v i d i n g uncontrollably,
pain rapidly accelerating beyond passivity to the point
of
absolute
peril.
INTRO
My mother was properly diagnosed with late stage three ovarian cancer in September 2013, after two years of receiving "its just IBS" gaslighting misdiagnoses from multiple specialists and healthcare professionals. In 2021, my mother is considered “medically stable”, she is entering her sixth year of remission, and living with cancer. This is made possible with a medication called Olaparib (Lynparza), a PARP inhibitor developed for the “maintenance treatment” of BRCA mutated advanced ovarian cancer in adults. In August 2020, Olaparib was approved by Health Canada following a validated phase III trial; my mother has been apart of the trialing program since 2016, with continued success, *touch wood*.
Entering the MFA program at Goldsmiths, I had her permission to make work about her experience with cancer. I felt a building pressure to talk about everything, even though I really wasn’t ready to. As I reflect on why I felt this pressure, I think it was the richness in the personal affect the experience carries, feeling rebellion towards the withdrawal of the Art market to acknowledge illness, never mind linking art to illness and recovery (the horror!), and not having yet reconciled much of the experience within myself.
I started the development of this project set out to make very large, over arching works about my mother’s experience; the systemic failures, her home care initiative spanning four years, and the experience of living with cancer. I positioned myself in a place of observation, this was something happening to my mother, the cancer was other to her, happening to the body, as she [insert whatever battle, survive, beat, overcome trope here] this disease. Cancer was happening to her body and we all disassociated her body from her in self preservation. Within this medicalized mechanization of body, we all disassociated from the trauma that occurred, and how it affected us all, becoming both victim and perpetrator simultaneously (thank you therapy for that clarity).
It wasn’t until a very special tutorial with a very special Artist, J.D., that I was able to start to accept how much the experience had affected me as well. I had internalized the medical gaze through this experience, and that was ok. I had been learning a new way of managing my body, just as my mother had learned from her mother in the same. And what was happening to my mother's body through the medical experience, the violence in examining, analyzing, shaming, mechanizing, I was inflicting onto mine. I was inadvertently accumulating trauma like pebbles on a beach, stuffing her into my body as though I were stuffing stones of all sizes into a pair of 15-20 mmHg stockings.
Holding her.
Compressing her.
Until she settled in my body permanently as
empathetic bloat.
WORKS
I think my body knew months before the diagnosis.
Imprinted with shadows of alienated intuition
reducing somatic signallings to painful whispers of internalized
dis
mis
sal.
Frustration builds
as your belly continued to swell with cells d i v i d i n g uncontrollably,
pain rapidly accelerating beyond passivity
to the point
of
absolute
peril.
Imprinted with shadows of alienated intuition
reducing somatic signallings to painful whispers of internalized
dis
mis
sal.
Frustration builds
as your belly continued to swell with cells d i v i d i n g uncontrollably,
pain rapidly accelerating beyond passivity
to the point
of
absolute
peril.
INTRO
My mother was properly diagnosed with late stage three ovarian cancer in September 2013, after two years of receiving "its just IBS" gaslighting misdiagnoses from multiple specialists and healthcare professionals. In 2021, my mother is considered “medically stable”, she is entering her sixth year of remission, and living with cancer. This is made possible with a medication called Olaparib (Lynparza), a PARP inhibitor developed for the “maintenance treatment” of BRCA mutated advanced ovarian cancer in adults. In August 2020, Olaparib was approved by Health Canada following a validated phase III trial; my mother has been apart of the trialing program since 2016, with continued success, *touch wood*.
Entering the MFA program at Goldsmiths, I had her permission to make work about her experience with cancer. I felt a building pressure to talk about everything, even though I really wasn’t ready to. As I reflect on why I felt this pressure, I think it was the richness in the personal affect the experience carries, feeling rebellion towards the withdrawal of the Art market to acknowledge illness, never mind linking art to illness and recovery (the horror!), and not having yet reconciled much of the experience within myself.
I started the development of this project set out to make very large, over arching works about my mother’s experience; the systemic failures, her home care initiative spanning four years, and the experience of living with cancer. I positioned myself in a place of observation, this was something happening to my mother, the cancer was other to her, happening to the body, as she [insert whatever battle, survive, beat, overcome trope here] this disease. Cancer was happening to her body and we all disassociated her body from her in self preservation. Within this medicalized mechanization of body, we all disassociated from the trauma that occurred, and how it affected us all, becoming both victim and perpetrator simultaneously (thank you therapy for that clarity).
It wasn’t until a very special tutorial with a very special Artist, J.D., that I was able to start to accept how much the experience had affected me as well. I had internalized the medical gaze through this experience, and that was ok. I had been learning a new way of managing my body, just as my mother had learned from her mother in the same. And what was happening to my mother's body through the medical experience, the violence in examining, analyzing, shaming, mechanizing, I was inflicting onto mine. I was inadvertently accumulating trauma like pebbles on a beach, stuffing her into my body as though I were stuffing stones of all sizes into a pair of 15-20 mmHg stockings.
Holding her.
Compressing her.
Until she settled in my body permanently as
empathetic bloat.
Entering the MFA program at Goldsmiths, I had her permission to make work about her experience with cancer. I felt a building pressure to talk about everything, even though I really wasn’t ready to. As I reflect on why I felt this pressure, I think it was the richness in the personal affect the experience carries, feeling rebellion towards the withdrawal of the Art market to acknowledge illness, never mind linking art to illness and recovery (the horror!), and not having yet reconciled much of the experience within myself.
I started the development of this project set out to make very large, over arching works about my mother’s experience; the systemic failures, her home care initiative spanning four years, and the experience of living with cancer. I positioned myself in a place of observation, this was something happening to my mother, the cancer was other to her, happening to the body, as she [insert whatever battle, survive, beat, overcome trope here] this disease. Cancer was happening to her body and we all disassociated her body from her in self preservation. Within this medicalized mechanization of body, we all disassociated from the trauma that occurred, and how it affected us all, becoming both victim and perpetrator simultaneously (thank you therapy for that clarity).
It wasn’t until a very special tutorial with a very special Artist, J.D., that I was able to start to accept how much the experience had affected me as well. I had internalized the medical gaze through this experience, and that was ok. I had been learning a new way of managing my body, just as my mother had learned from her mother in the same. And what was happening to my mother's body through the medical experience, the violence in examining, analyzing, shaming, mechanizing, I was inflicting onto mine. I was inadvertently accumulating trauma like pebbles on a beach, stuffing her into my body as though I were stuffing stones of all sizes into a pair of 15-20 mmHg stockings.
Holding her.
Compressing her.
Until she settled in my body permanently as
empathetic bloat.
WORKS
LEARNING TO CRAWL
WEARABLE SCULPTURE
CARE, AFTER CARE
I AM VELCRO