Body Says, No.
Firstdraft, Solo, 2023

Body Says, No examines the relationship between the medicalised body, caregiving, and invisible forms of labour. Combining video, photography, miniature sculptures and mobility aids, the exhibition explores how assistive technologies both support and shape bodily experience.

The exhibition includes Enacting Dreams / Always Knitting, a video embedded within a walker; Two Way Street, where the artist and her mother perform mutual acts of care through the language of silent comedy; Being Home, a photographic series documenting modifications made to the family home; and Body Says, No, a video projection featuring miniature medical furniture that reflects the ways built environments and support structures demand accommodation from the body.

Drawing on lived experiences of caregiving, the works consider how mobility aids, medical equipment, and domestic modifications become extensions of the body and infrastructures of care. While designed to support movement and independence, these objects also reveal relationships of dependence, maintenance, endurance, and survival.

The exhibition asks: How do assistive technologies stand in for the body? What forms of labour remain unseen within systems of care? Through everyday actions, medical objects, and acts of repetition, Body Says, No reflects on the ways care is negotiated through physical structures that simultaneously support, constrain, and shape human experience.