Louise Kenward  is a visual artist based in the UK link who has recently initiated a book on women and illness ‘Disturbing the Body’ a new anthology of women’s writing due to be published in October this year. The book was prompted by the need to write about ‘why language and words are so important when it comes to illness, disability, trauma and surgery, and in all aspects of considering ways in which we find our bodies do not behave as we would like or expect them to.’ Louise has also worked with museum collections. Having made an initial approach via email I arranged a Zoom conversation on Monday 15 June. 

 

Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place. 

(Sontag,1978 p.3) 

 

The conversation was wide ranging on our experience of illness and the things we have discovered, the expression of our experience through the visual arts and for Louise in writing. This we agreed is different from Art Therapy. For us both expression of our experience has been characterised by ideas of documentation and testimony a need to ‘diarise’ the experience in words and visual imagery, creating a necessary narrative for ourselves. We wondered whether our experiences working with museum collections has influenced this at all. 

 

Referencing Frida Kahlo’s diary and paintings on her plaster corsets (necessary to support her back following operations on her spine) and Virginia Woolf ‘On Being Ill’ as examples of how women have expressed what is happening as it happened. Louise talked about her 100 days project: a jar of sea water ‘archived’ and labelled with her observations, one for every day she managed to walk to the beach when suffering from chronic fatigue.  We touched on the performative nature of nursing and the way that ritual is used to reassure that everything is normal, calm and under control: gloves and aprons are donned, bloods are taken, observations (blood pressure, temperature and weight) are registered these are all things I have only noticed since starting my MA and moving regularly between King’s and my practice. 

 

The conversation was wide ranging around women living with chronic illness and being in a ‘remission society’ Anne-Marie Creamer’s term link, the assumption that illness is a finite and time limited whereas the reality for many is chronic illness and remission are part of life. Touching on Johanna Hedva’s Sick Woman Theory and Anne-Marie Creamer vulnerability and dependence we discussed the systematic problem of male ‘cure’ led medicine. 

​

Finally we agreed to keep in touch, and I added several things to my reading list and: 

Anne Boyer,  The Undying and 

A Meditation on Modern Illness

Sinéad Gleeson, Constellations

Sarah Ramey, The Lady’s Book for her Mysterious Illness (in particular the chapter ’The Hero’s Journey’)