Vessel

A contested illness is one without defined biomedical causes, diagnostic methods or agreed treatments. These diseases are biomedically invisible yet life changing for the people affected, who often feel abandoned by the systems we rely on to take care of us. They also overwhelmingly affect women.

Vessel explores the real-life experience of living with a highly contested illness and use it as a lens through which to examine the misogyny at the core of medical science and how the othering of women’s bodies by the medical establishment inflicts harm and suffering on women.

Developed during my time as artist-in-residence on the AiRdrop residency programme from satellite, supported by Arts Council England.