the hidden costs of wellness
I’ve been collecting the used IV bags from my Lyme treatment. 2 years: 150+ IV sittings, 2-5 single use plastic bags per sitting. There’s a guilt that comes with treatment: what is the cost of my wellness? I’m just one patient, and yet look how much plastic waste my treatment produces. These (most) IV bags are non biohazardous waste, so at large they get thrown into landfills.
In this new series, “The Hidden Costs of Wellness” I am photographing my IV bags out in nature. I then have plans to make other sculptural & installation art with them. This isn’t a media I ever considered to work with artistically, but it is now a material I’ve formed an intimate and vulnerable bond with. I hope this series sparks conversation around the magnitude of costs for treatments like mine which hurt the Earth, yet stem from our increased health epidemics which are very much due to lack of connection with the Earth.
(All plastics were recollected from nature after each photoshoot)
Root Rot photoshoot
Plastic Island photoshoot
Glutathione Towers photoshoot
No Mud, No Lotus photoshoot
Medical Waste Gathering photoshoot
Photograph stills from performance video “Midwinter Shield”
Photograph stills from performance video “Learning to Stand amidst Strong Currents”