Sick of being Patient

About Charlie Fitz

Charlie Fitz (she/her/they) is a UK based sick and disabled artist, arts practitioner, writer, medical humanities postgraduate at Birkbeck, where she is a recipient of the Wellcome Trust studentship. She studied English and drama BA hons at Goldsmiths College, University of London, graduating in 2012. She began an MA in Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths in 2014, shortly afterwards becoming chronically ill and choosing to withdraw. Since becoming sick Fitz has turned to art practice as a meditative process, a form of disability activism and as a means to understand and reclaim her experiences of illness and trauma. Her multiform works explore lived experiences of illness, disability and trauma; whilst aiming to resist and challenge the expectation that the 'sick' be patient or passive to Western biomedicine. 

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Fitz is a co-founding member of Resting Up Collective and a co-director of the non-profit artist studio TRIAD³ .

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Since 2019 her work has been exhibited in 11 exhibitions in London, Manchester, Birmingham and online. In 2022 she exhibited in group shows with TRIAD³, at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, with In Transit as part of an artist residency, at No Format gallery, with Shape Arts and in the event ‘Shards: contemporary representations of disability’ at The British Museum; in which she also ran a workshop and spoke on a panel. Fitz has had press in Disability Arts Online, Dazed, It’s Nice That and Stylist, see press here.

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She has also had artwork published in Cordella Magazine, Able Zine, Disability Arts Online, The Grapevine Zine, Life Continues After, dubble, Sisters of Frida, Resting Up and more see her writing publications here. 

After completing her MA Fitz plans on working towards her first solo exhibition and continuing her arts practice and academic research.

You can read her full artist CV here. 

What is 'Sick of being Patient'?

The word patient and patience both come from the Latin word 'Patien', which means 'one who suffers'. 'Sick of being Patient, is the home to a range of visual and written solo and collaborative creative projects by Charlie Fitz. Many of the visual art projects are collaborative pieces with Oscar Vinter. Fitz & Vinter are partners in art and life. The projects aim to resist and challenge the expectation that the 'sick' person be patient, passive and submissive to medical institutions and a society that is systematically failing the chronically ill and disabled.