Validation

(work on canvas, 2010 – ongoing) paint, pen, pencil, blood, food colouring, embroidery thread, urine, bacon fat, etc. on canvas

I use the everyday things around me to mark, once each day, ‘I exist’ on the canvas, thus reaffirming and confirming my ongoing existence. It also acts as a sort of real-time calendar, marking time itself, getting more incomprehensible as time goes on.

This piece revisits an oft-seen anxiety in my work — the extent to which our cognition creates reality, and even the self. In this case, the work is a sly take on Descartes’ ‘Cogito…’ “I am thinking, therefore I am”. Beneath the surface there hovers the ongoing struggle to exist, and some of the darkest aspects of my personal psyche.

I have a lot of breakdowns, and because of trauma I struggle with strange internalised beliefs that I don’t fully exist or am not fully human. It is not rational. So, each time I am writing ‘I exist’ it feels like a bit of an ‘up yours’ to the world, and to the part of me that wants to give up.

I also have memory problems, so it works as a sort of outsourced memory – I existed that day, and that day, and that day… even if I can’t remember that I did. So, it’s also an ‘up yours’ to disability.