1 - 10
Chronic pain is not uncommon in its diagnosis but a deeper level of understanding or dialogue around it is. Underlying this work are two questions: how does someone with chronic pain describe what words often fail to do? And therefore how does someone else understand pain and sensations they may never feel or comprehend?
This work has been made collaboratively with people who suffer from chronic pain, process and pieces informed by time spent with them. 1-10, the title of this work, comes from the term clinicians use to label pain. The multisensory nature of this work is designed to open up dialogue, to rethink understandings of pain while inviting viewers to engage for themselves.
Photographed Highland Perthshire, Scotland
intervened portraits
Participants intervened on portraits of themselves to show the sensations and pain they feel, to reveal the hidden. Some choose to do multiple of the same image, demonstrating the different layers and sensations they feel in the same place.
the colour of pain
Who or what is your pain? What characteristics do they have? The number of layers correlates to the level of pain of the participant that day, 1-10. With the colour/s of their pain chosen by them, ranked in order of severity.
dear pain,
Looking at the 'person of pain’ within themselves, each participant wrote to pain. The letters and are recording of them reading it out can be seen and heard below.
Carol
Helen
shape of pain
Participants made embossing plates that represented the shape, feeling, emotion and depth of pain. These were then embossed onto card of their choice to allow others to ‘feel’ their pain by touching the works.
who is the person of pain?
During one-one sessions the participants were asked about who the person of pain within them is? To start to explore this through mark-making, using these instead of words. Works made below.
further reading
The Story of Pain: from prayer to painkillers by Joanna Bourke
The Body Keeps the Score: brain, mind and body in the healing of trauma by Bessel van der Kolk
CARE MANIFESTO: the politics of compassion by The Care Collective
Recovery: the lost art of convalescence by Gavin Francis