Leave a gap like a door

Leave a Gap Like a Door was developed during the MaMA research residency Cripping Cultural Work, where I worked with the question of how cultural work measures value through productivity, continuity, and clean timelines. As part of that research, I made this installation to push back against the way care and chronic illness get translated into so called CV gaps, time counted as absence.

Time slowed into maintenance: pacing, refusal, adaptation. Video, voice, textiles, and a makeshift fort sit in a non-hierarchical relationship, each carrying the project’s weight. The video holds the narrative through a spoken text. The chair routes that voice through the body, so the work can be met beyond hearing. From the back of the armchair, a fort begins: a shelter from productive time, a room for crip time.

My son builds forts. He calls them a place to go to cry. This one is stitched from my embroideries and pieces passed down to me. Older works curate perfect moments, like a CV. Mine answer with what gets omitted: waiting, grief, fear, anger, and small helps. The fort is also for children, a place in the gallery that lets them in



The work was shown in And I’ll be back to perform health for you at MaMA, Rotterdam, and in Thinking in Textiles at Nieuw Charlois, Rotterdam.