Autoportraits
This work is an invitation to untangle and share the burden of chronic illness, to find a common language in what can be a frightening and isolating journey. I didn’t want to make portraits of people in their homes or hospitals but to gather the interiority of an experience, the pyschological landscape below the surface, to what’s often buried and rarely discussed.
This series stemmed from the internalised horror of my own autoimmune diagnosis, 17 years ago and a growing sense of hereditary guilt at what I may have genetically passed on to my children. The idea grew out of absence. I couldn’t find these thoughts represented in artwork or the media, pushing me to to raise visibility, challenge assumptions and deepen public understanding of autoimmune and invisible illnesses. I wanted to express the perpetual struggle of living in a mutinous body you can’t escape. I gathered like-minded people, to expand my knowledge, seeking advice and understanding of how to come to peace with this predicament.
Vulnerable bodies are universal you don’t need these specific illnesses to be able to relate to the work. These discussions are a healthy insight for what is to come for anyone living in any body.
Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor:
“Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”
