A low hum, a strong gale

For the past eleven years, I have lived with undiagnosed chronic pain. This paper functions in support of my thesis exhibition: delving into my embodied experience of invisible illness and internalized ableism as it relates to disability justice and crip theory. The body of work aims to reconstruct my practice in order to best accommodate my own access needs. "A low hum, a strong gale" calls into question what it means to create a body of work that outwardly rejects the idea that to make valuable art, I must 'suffer for it.' The process of creating the exhibition included working interdependently with others to help materialize my ideas, and building upon tasks—primarily breathing—that I can perform from bed when I'm unwell. My material explorations aim to make visible the invisible—documenting the physical limitations that are a result of my pain, rather than searching for evidence of its existence.