Blood on Silk : Bleeding Out (Internally) The Book, 2016, rice and other papers, thread, ink and paste. Collection - University of Kent Special Collections
My artist book/instructional manual, Blood on Silk : Bleeding Out (Internally) The Book was selected for the group exhibition Prescriptions at The Beaney House of Art and Knowledge, Canterbury, UK. It was jointly selected by Egidija Čiricaitė and Dr. Stella Bolaki/University of Kent.
The exhibition consisted of over seventy artists’ book on wellbeing and medicine with the featured artist being Martha A. Hall from the USA. Stella Bolaki wrote in the catalogue essay ‘ A physician often interacts with the patient’s chart as a textual object (for example before in initial encounter with the patient) but this is to gain clinical knowledge. The demands made by the books of this catalogue on health professionals are of a different nature. Touch constitutes a central element when reading these books. Physical intimacy can be threatening when the object one comes into contact with explores trauma or serious illness. …. Touch not only challenges biomedical clinical gaze but also becomes associated with an exposure to the other’s alterity or difference.’
This book, Bleeding Out (Internally) consists of two parts, A and B. The sizes of the two parts are slightly different so it is not obvious that they belong together. Part A is a picture book intended to be touched, pages turned and held close by the reader. The images are representations of the sublime in the materiality of blood or bleeding out (internally). Part B is an instructional manual trying to make sense of a short, traumatic, catastrophic event such as uncontrollable internal bleeding. The patient and the witness experience this event simultaneously but not together.
This book frames an episode of bleeding out (internally) as the narrative of a very short illness. The physical beauty of blood in part A is coupled with the educational, instructional manual in part B to examine the differing body mind responses. Through the artist book format, the physical action of turning the pages and touching the images, the viewer is encouraged to have an intimate, physical relationship with the material. This book is part of a larger artistic project called Blood on Silk looking at medicalised death, primarily in ICU.
The exhibition was co-curated by Dr Stella Bolaki from the University of Kent and the independent artist Egidija Čiricaitė.
