SELF-CARE
PHOTO DOCUMENTATION BY: Milla Millasnoore, Asya Kaplan, and Genietta Varsi. PHOTOGRAPHY OF SELF-CARE BY: Pavlina Belokrenitskaya
2022-2023
Self-Care is a multi-media artwork and installation exploring notions of care, labor, intergenerational trauma, and bodies, as well as the impact of the gender binary on so-called “female” healthcare. Self-Care aims to critically examine notions of care, the role of gender in medicine, ableism, and familial relationships surrounding notions of disease. The project attempts to undoom and reclaim bodily autonomy over a body caught at the crossroads of neoliberalist healthcare agendas and genetic fatalism.
The centerpiece of Self-Care is a specially designed wearable chest binder that can house living breast cancer cells with the same genetic condition as the artist. This chest binder allows the artist to queer and reclaim their body by caring for their predestined cancer before it emerges. As a wearable, the binder also uses the cancer’s liquid environment as a means to flatten the appearance of the chest and perform gender-affirming care for the wearer. The binder is a device that questions and attempts to reclaim the body in consideration of the looming threat of bodily violence related to medical interventions for Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer Syndrome.
Self-Care is a rehearsal of embodiment for bodies that are constantly transgressing the boundaries between sick and not sick. It explores the hopes, successes, and failures that emerge from attempts to “live” with a body and all its faults. The work is also an archive of the multiple mutants and subjectivities, as described by Jason Zingsheim’s Mutational Identity Theory, that come together to form a sense of self and the connection the self can have with its body. The accompanying video works titled Mommagraphy Techniques and A Letter to My Mother catalog the intergenerational experiences of embodiment and struggles concerning health and gender across four generations, the artist, their mother, their mother’s mother, and their mother’s mother’s mother.
In the site-specific Finnish installation of the work, Self-Care included an interview with Finnish genetic health expert Kristiina Aittomäki.
SELF-CARE is based on the research project titled “Prophylaxis” done during Art.ITMO.Residency at the Art & Science Centre at ITMO University in 2021.
SELF-CARE has been commissioned by the Bioart Society for m/other becomings and was part of the m/other becomings exhibition i in May of 2022 in Helsinki, FI. m/other becomings is a collaboration between Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology (DK), The Association for Arts and Mental Health (DK), Kultivator (SE), Art Lab Gnesta (SE), and Bioart Society (FI).
Self-Care has been displayed at Art Laboratory Berlin for Matter of Flux in 2023.
The work was awarded the Honorary Mention in the EU S+T+ARTS Prize in 2024.
The centerpiece of Self-Care is a specially designed wearable chest binder that can house living breast cancer cells with the same genetic condition as the artist. This chest binder allows the artist to queer and reclaim their body by caring for their predestined cancer before it emerges. As a wearable, the binder also uses the cancer’s liquid environment as a means to flatten the appearance of the chest and perform gender-affirming care for the wearer. The binder is a device that questions and attempts to reclaim the body in consideration of the looming threat of bodily violence related to medical interventions for Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer Syndrome.
Self-Care is a rehearsal of embodiment for bodies that are constantly transgressing the boundaries between sick and not sick. It explores the hopes, successes, and failures that emerge from attempts to “live” with a body and all its faults. The work is also an archive of the multiple mutants and subjectivities, as described by Jason Zingsheim’s Mutational Identity Theory, that come together to form a sense of self and the connection the self can have with its body. The accompanying video works titled Mommagraphy Techniques and A Letter to My Mother catalog the intergenerational experiences of embodiment and struggles concerning health and gender across four generations, the artist, their mother, their mother’s mother, and their mother’s mother’s mother.
In the site-specific Finnish installation of the work, Self-Care included an interview with Finnish genetic health expert Kristiina Aittomäki.
SELF-CARE is based on the research project titled “Prophylaxis” done during Art.ITMO.Residency at the Art & Science Centre at ITMO University in 2021.
SELF-CARE has been commissioned by the Bioart Society for m/other becomings and was part of the m/other becomings exhibition i in May of 2022 in Helsinki, FI. m/other becomings is a collaboration between Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology (DK), The Association for Arts and Mental Health (DK), Kultivator (SE), Art Lab Gnesta (SE), and Bioart Society (FI).
Self-Care has been displayed at Art Laboratory Berlin for Matter of Flux in 2023.
The work was awarded the Honorary Mention in the EU S+T+ARTS Prize in 2024.