Hollowness/Dislocations

When I had a blood clot in my lung, starving a part of my lung for blood for weeks before my symptoms were taken seriously, it did not feel how I was told it should.

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It did not feel like "an elephant was sitting on my chest", it felt like a tunnel opening up inside of me, vacant space, an awareness that something was very wrong and the ability to pinpoint exactly where it felt "wrong". A hollowness, a carving out, negative space.

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I made this sculpture in 2018, 4 years after my pulmonary embolism naming it Dislocations, as by that point my entire torso had become very unstable due to overlapping genetic connective tissue disorders, caused by gene mutations COL5A1 and FBN2 Classical EDS and another Marfan-like illness.

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The hollowness of this little sculpture reflects the instability of my torso, ribs and spine. But also that hollow feeling in my chest, that is so often marked as a sort of false beginning in my illness narrative, a bad omen for what was to come. A feeling I now get whenever I am run down and has come back to me now during this time of uncertainty. 

When I have the space and resources to do so I foresee recreating this sculpture on a far bigger scale.