Internality Exposed
When I was two, I was diagnosed with Classical Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (cEDS), a connective tissue disorder characterized by chronic pain and fatigue, loose joints and ligaments, poor wound healing, and highly fragile skin. “Internality Exposed” channels a body inherently broken. Subject to core structural faults that begin in my genetic code and radiate outward, I contend with my corporeal form as both subject and object—vulnerable to itself and to the unflinching harshness and danger of the external world.
As a medical mystery with a genetic disease without any genetic mutation, I turn to my imagination and intuition to fill in gaps where science has failed me, providing my own mode of self-determination. Fundamentally pushing the boundaries of what can be understood as recognizably human within biomorphic construction and personification, spatial construction blurs the lines between body and world. Tissue melds with cloud and cellular connectivity traces paths through festering planes of cavity, organ, and marrow, which invoke cycles of flare-up in trajectories between desiccation and fruitless repair.
I subvert artistic control, allowing the materiality and natural movements of my mediums to guide my eye as I uncover microscopic rhythms of cellular connectivity through a process of negotiated and responsive creation. Through experimental layering, I incorporate imagery of scar tissue and concrete—eternal opponents as they are. In tandem, materiality takes an active role in transposing fragility as fissures of pigment traverse the canvas, and upon exposure to heat, screenprinting additive festers, growing like mold out of the surface of the canvas. Weaving through transparency, fragility, and solidity, my layering process mimics the layering of organ, tissue, and skin, embodying the negotiation between stability and automatic internal control and external or disease-imposed determinations.
