BLOOD WORKS

This deeply personal project began with the painstaking collection and archiving of macro photographs of blood splatters left on cotton swabs after blood tests starting in 2015, a few years after being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that required monthly lab tests. During the same time period, I also produced black and white self-portraits. For this installation, I printed selected macro photographs on photocopy paper and stenciled on the corresponding blood test results. These stenciled photocopies were then collaged, either by hand (canvas) or digitally (video), with the black and white self-portraits.

Turning the blood splatters into abstractions is an exorcism of sorts, attempting to shed the tyranny that these tiny blood dots and their corresponding lab results have on my life. As if the closer and closer I get to it, the blood is rendered powerless, and I regain my freedom from it. Blood Works was also produced as a communication tool, to viscerally bring in the viewer into my experience of living with an autoimmune disease; to share the stranglehold that a tiny blood splatter and innocuous-seeming text may have on one’s physiological, emotional, and psychological wellbeing.