Maintenance Body
Maintenance Body examines the labor of living with chronic illness: preparing a bed before surgery, organizing medication, completing another intake form, adapting a daily routine, and deciding when to ask for help. Through medical artifacts, domestic objects, performance, and participant contributions, the project brings these repeated actions into view.
Beginning with my own experience of reconstructive surgery and continuing illness, the work considers how a life is reorganized around changing capacity. It follows what happens between appointments, within the home, and in public, where illness may remain invisible even as it shapes every decision.
Statement
Maintenance Body is a research-based social practice project examining chronic illness through the tasks, objects, language, and relationships that sustain daily life. It asks whose knowledge about the body is recognized, how illness becomes visible to others, and what happens when recovery does not provide a clear ending.
The works move among three settings: the home, the medical encounter, and public life. A bed is prepared for an anticipated loss of function. Objects used in surgery and recovery receive the same photographic attention as the items a person chooses for comfort.
Medical records are reorganized through redaction, revealing the language of observation, assessment, and discharge. Ordinary errands become performances of apparent wellness while pain remains concealed.
Across these settings, maintenance takes material form. It appears in a medication schedule, a pile of paperwork, an adapted movement, a request for assistance, or the arrangement of objects within reach.
Repetition becomes a record of the attention required to continue.
The project develops from personal documentation toward shared accounts of chronic illness. Participatory works invite people to contribute the routines, practical knowledge, and forms of assistance that support their lives. These contributions extend the project beyond one medical history while preserving the differences among individual experiences.
Selected Works
Click on a photo to learn more about each piece
Pieces coming soon.