Christina Oyawale | careworn & coil

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Christina Oyawale, “Where the Sun Begins and Ends,” 2021

(courtesy of Artist)

careworn & coil undertakes the ongoing photographic and written documentation of my disabled body through invisible physical and mental illness. The project aims to showcase the daily negotiations that occur within myself, replicating the complexities and comfort of living as a spoonie. I work to challenge notions of able-bodied productivity, using photographs and sculptural installation to task viewers with challenging their perceptions of the human experience, creating an environment that emphasizes the emotional vulnerability of placing private life into the public sphere. careworn & coil breathes the concept of "Crip Time", a term coined by academic Alison Kafer – disabled people’s relationship to time rather than monoculture’s ideas productivity in a given day – and bell hooks’ “Oppositional Gaze” – allowing Black bodies the right to “looking”. The project asks viewers to interrogate their perceptions of invisible illness and how it manifests in the body. Within the images, light and shadows act as a catalyst for both these theoretical concepts and how they specifically interact with my navigation of fatness, depression and chronic pain.

The project applies research-creation as a means of situating itself within the broader conversation of disability theory; notably from a Black Feminist disability politic that is oftentimes understudied. Incorporating the works of racialized disabled scholars such as Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Mia Mingus and Alice Wong allows me to take hold of my personhood while rejecting palatability. Ultimately, in staking myself on these terms, I allow for an active viewership that challenges ableism and supposedly “correct” ways of being consumed.