Phases (2022)
Phases is an installation work that incorporates sound and physical documentation to attempt to visualize and make visceral an otherwise invisible experience of life with chronic pain. My twin sister, Charlotte McConkey, and I created this collaborative work to allow a space for pain to take control and to reflect on the toll of navigating the everyday as women with chronic pain. Charlotte recorded her thought processes during moments of pain on whatever material was readily available in order to express the immediacy and unpredictability of her pain on a daily basis. The sound of the installation is a distorted recording of breathing techniques she uses to get through particularly painful flares, played on loop to express the fluidity and continuity of living with pain.
Together, the "artifacts of pain" and sound create an insulated space to step into Charlotte's particular experience of pain and reflect on the jarring yet still experience of consistency.
