Self-Care

This artwork is shown in an incomplete state, as the venue has been found to not be able to support it in its fully installed format.

Self-Care is a multi-media artwork and installation exploring notions of care, labor, intergenerational trauma, and bodies, as well as the impact of the gender binary on so-called “female” healthcare. Self-Care aims to critically examine notions of care, the role of gender in medicine, ableism, and familial relationships with diseases while attempting to reclaim bodily autonomy over a body caught at the crossroads of neoliberalist healthcare agendas and genetic fatalism.

Self-Care asks how narrative can be used to rearticulate notions of care, disease identities, and relationships.

The centerpiece of Self-Care is a specially designed wearable chest binder that can house living breast cancer cells that have the same genetic mutant status as the artist, materially enacting core principles of Crip Technoscience. Self-Care is a rehearsal of embodiment for bodies that are constantly transgressing the boundaries between sick and not sick. It explores the hopes, successes, and failures that emerge from attempts to “live” with a body and all its faults.