The way we understand each other as human beings is through connecting our own embodied experience with that of someone else. If we do not share a common experience, then cultural narratives and stories enable us to build empathetic bridges to cross that gap. Most people experience pain, exhaustion, and illness as one chapter of their life with a beginning and an end. Disclosure of pain, struggle, or vulnerability are usually met with shame.  When faced with physical limitations, we learn that the moral choice is to push through. Not pushing through is unacceptable. There is no familiar non-linear story for those whose bodies struggle in an endless loop of suffering; for those who cannot push through. 

In a culture colored by virtuous boot strap pulling, what happens when the body desperately needs rest but cannot sleep, when night after night lying in bed is a place of struggle, failure, and shame? We ask the question, “Is rest a self-indulgent luxury, a sign of moral laziness, or a battleground for human wholeness?”

For many with chronic conditions, routines of self care demand an unyielding repetition. This is reflected in the repetitive rhythms of the way that we approach cyanotype – a 170-year-old non-toxic photographic printing process.  For us, the dark blue monochromatic nature of the prints evokes the way that high levels of pain and exhaustion color and dim the senses, disrupting the formation of clear and distinct memories. 

Chronic health issues often go hand in hand with trauma, a type of neurological response that occurs when someone feels that their safety is threatened and that they are powerless to change their situation. These experiences are especially common in medical settings where repeated experiences of being unheard can be traumatic even if doctors are good doctors and intend no harm.

When confronted with other people’s pain, the instinct is to remove that discomfort by either looking away, or trying to fix it. In sharing this work we are asking the viewer to enter uncomfortable spaces with a different posture. The vulnerability of these images is an invitation to join in that vulnerability through the work of stretching the imagination beyond pity, beyond judgment, beyond fear.

To become a mother is an act of vulnerability; so too is the process of transition for a trans woman. In the midst of these raw moments loom the cultural myths shaped by idealized womanhood and its contrasting shadow the “monstrous” woman. Misogyny defines women by their ability to bear children as well as elevating their existential capacity for love and care. Many cultures throughout human history have reduced women to three tropes, the maiden, the matron and the hag. The matron, or the idealized mother, ostensibly elevates women to a role that in real life can never be achieved while the purest maiden earns the right to serve as a vessel to become the matron. The monstrous hag is the failed matron. This gives cis women one path to validity and leaves trans women no way to be perceived as legitimate women. For the cis woman who has “achieved” pregnancy and childbirth the weight of idealized motherhood can be crushing. The sainted  pedestal is a narrow cliff with sharp rocks of shame lurking below.

For many trans women the process of transition means confronting disgust and rejection on the faces of strangers and loved ones. Simply being themselves conjures the deeply feared monstrous woman, the thing of shame and shadow that tramples on sacred womanhood. Our work wrestles with the way these stories are embedded in our own bodies coloring the way we view ourselves. Perhaps, by playfully depicting the specters that haunt us we can exorcise their presence, clearing space for vulnerability to be a place of human connection.