Ashes To Ashes

ASHES TO ASHES, DUST TO DUST, I HAD A DREAM I WAS ENOUGH

This work explores the contradiction between knowing your own worth and living in a world that repeatedly asks you to prove it.

The phrase ‘I had a dream I was enough’, inspired by Wheelchair Sports Camp, reflects my experience of being made to feel inadequate because of my body. I know that I am enough, and I am proud of what I have achieved, but years of being judged for being fat, followed by the scrutiny and hostility attached to disability, leave their mark. Knowing that those judgements are wrong does not make them disappear.

On the reverse, ‘WORK IN PROGRESS / PLAY ON HOLD’ describes the continual labour of living with chronic illness. Managing health, symptoms, appointments, medication, recovery and everyday life consumes capacity before I can spend it on the things I actually want to do. I want to keep learning, making and growing, but I also resent having to work so hard simply to reach the starting point.

‘Play on hold’ refers to the parts of life that are postponed while the necessary work of looking after myself takes priority. My capacity is limited, and caring for the body that allows me to make can also be the thing that prevents me from making.

The cats are a recurring motif within my work. I have always lived with cats and associate them with familiarity, comfort and home: small, dependable presences within a piece concerned with striving, judgement and insufficiency.

The work does not ask whether I will ever become enough. It asks what it means to know that I already am, while continuing to live with the consequences of a world that has repeatedly suggested otherwise.