Institution
MTU Crawford College of Art and Design (MTU CCAD)
Medium
Painting
Graduation Year
Class of 2026
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Within my practice, I explore the folklore of grieving the loss of self through the degenerative disease Multiple Sclerosis, examining the intersections of disability, illness, identity, and material memory. Rooted in Crip Theory, my practice challenges normative ideas of the “healthy” or “functional” body, instead positioning disability as a lived, political, and embodied experience rather than something to be hidden or overcome. Through this framework, I investigate how illness reshapes identity, temporality, and one’s relationship to the body. My work attempts to visualise the gradual deterioration of bodily function and the prolonged process of coming to terms with this reality since my teenage years. Using MRI scans of my brain as source material, I create paintings that trace the visible scarring and lesions which ultimately led to my diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis at sixteen. These paintings become both bodily records and emotional landscapes, documenting degeneration while also reflecting processes of adaptation, grief, and acceptance. The terrain within the installation acts as a mirror to my disease: unstable, fragmented, overgrown, and in continual transformation. I draw particular attention to overlooked waste ground, spaces often dismissed as barren, unwanted, or without value. These spaces being a metaphor for the disabled body under capitalist and medicalised frameworks. Like these neglected terrains, disabled bodies are frequently positioned as sites of failure, abandonment, or dysfunction. Through my installation, I reclaim these spaces as places of resilience, persistence, and quiet regeneration. The twelve paintings numerically reference cyclical systems connected to womanhood, bodily rhythms, and the passage of time. Accompanying the paintings are wilting gorse plants that I have sewn and nurtured by hand. Gorse, often considered invasive or undesirable, becomes symbolic of the self-created folklore surrounding my illness and my ongoing negotiation with acceptance. Through the repetitive acts of sewing, care, and maintenance, I explore the tension between degeneration and preservation, fragility and endurance, constructing an environment that reflects both the psychological and physical realities of living with chronic illness.
