Image Description:A self-portrait printed into the green chlorophyll of a copper leaf on a black background. The leaf is shaped like an elongated oval, has white sawtooth edges and red veins running through it. The self-portrait is a close up of my face, taking up the whole leaf and I am looking off to the side.
As I move through space I am perceived as “healthy” but inside of my body, my immune system mistakes my tendons, ligaments, joints, and organs as invaders, actively working to break them down. While mostly invisible, illness has greatly shaped who I am as a person and is an experience from which I draw a lot of knowledge and power.
Through chlorophyll printing, which uses UV light to print photographic images directly onto leaves, I am exploring how illness/disability is represented in society. I am printing imagery from my recurring visits to doctors, the disability community and disability culture, highlighting what is invisible about our experience.
I am interested in the disconnect in the way disability is most often understood as a purely negative experience and the way the fragility of nature is seen with a lens of reverence. The action of printing representations of disability onto leaves highlights the organic nature of disability, reframing it as a part of human diversity. Printing medical imagery reclaims our medicalized bodies and journey as patients, creating a new sense of agency. The fact that chlorophyll prints are impermanent, and will continue to decay over time, asks the viewer to confront the bodily impermanence we all share.