Subject: I am interested in the different ways that people experience disability, specifically in this case Fibromyalgia (with my backup being depression/anxiety), and how those experiences can be interpreted to images by a single person (in this case me as the artist). I want this piece to show the multitudes of ways that people can experience disability and how those differences can vary on an even greater scale when looked at or interpreted by an outside source. I think this will shed some more light on how diverse the same disability can be for people and bring awareness to a disability I don’t see many people talking about.
Form and Method: I want this piece to take the form of of quotes from my interviews then have images mapped with string to each quote that inspired them to form a collage of works. For instance an interpretation of what someones coping skills might look like in a visual context. I think this form will show the scale of difference by making the display somewhat chaotic (although not hard to follow), rather than a very uniform display of answers and images. I will likely be producing the imagery through screenprint and risograph prints to have a new media element of interview and time plus the influence of older media in printmaking.
Context and Audience: I was influenced on the method of this piece by my Anthropology of Death class for the nature of interpretation and different methods of display (for instance memory museums for large scale tragedies), as well as a work in the Faculty Exhibition last semester that was a collage looking work with a large amount of medical imagery. I think long term, I would like this style of my work to be displayed in a more public sphere rather than only a gallery space. I think this would be a really interesting area for it to fit in to as I think more people would see it and interact with it if it was somewhere like a mural wall type of display. I would like my work to bring more attention to lesser known disabilities in the cultural sphere, as well as bring disability advocacy to the main public so that the struggles that come from disability are no longer private and hidden within the community.