Surrogate Bodies: How contemporary art practice can communicate the lived experience of chronic pain.

Abstract

This research project explores how contemporary art practice can deepen our understanding of embodied experiences of persistent pain and illness. Through installation-based practice, I aim to make visible my intangible experiences of living with endometriosis. Kate Seear identifies endometriosis as a disease characterised by uncertainty, a trait that permeates its aetiology, treatments, health outcomes, and broader discourse. Rather than attempting to define an essence of the disease, which risks losing sight of its vast and multifaceted scope, my research sits within the questioning of it, embracing its abstract and fluctuating qualities to more accurately articulate my embodied experience.

Informed by the philosophical and phenomenological perspectives of Drew Leder and S. Kay Toombs, among others, this research examines how pain and illness transform lived experience, reshaping not only one’s physicality but one’s identity and self-conception. Additionally, I turn to Elaine Scarry’s understandings of 'the weapon' and 'the wound' as primary metaphors for articulating embodied notions of pain. We can observe these metaphors playing out within the practices of Chiharu Shiota and Rebecca Horn, who further utilise the element of tension – which has come to play a central role in my own practice – employed as a structural tool, a conceptual and theoretical underpinning, and a conduit for conveying feeling itself. Lastly, insights from Eugenie Lee and Jill Bennett highlight the value of affect and heightened bodily awareness as a lasting outcome within the viewer, particularly within socially engaged practice.

In foregrounding the feelings that surround persistent pain and illness, my studio outcomes aim to hold space for difficult emotions and sensations, evoking a heightened bodily response in the viewer. The outcomes of this research aim to connect people in shared pain and illness journeys, whilst raising awareness and education within the broader community.