Disabled, Chronically Ill, Severe Artist

Abstract

Disabled, Chronically Ill, Severe Artist Panteha Abareshi (bio) Keywords art, disabled artists, Panteha, Abareshi, installation art, visibility, sickjle cell anemia, chronic illness Click for larger view View full resolution A Lively Corpse 2022 Image description above: A chair with its arms wrapped in bubble wrap and legs wrapped in foam cylinders on a concrete floor, against a white wall. Medical boots, painted with butterflies, are attached with a metal bar to the chair seat, where a square brace faces front. [End Page 681] MY NAME IS PANTEHA ABARESHI; I am an artist currently based in Los Angeles, CA. My work is rooted in my existence as a body with sickle cell zero beta thalassemia, a genetic blood disorder that causes debilitating pain and bodily deterioration that both increase with age. Being a chronically ill body has shaped my experience into one that is extremely and highly isolating. The nuances of disability and chronic illness are lost on the average able-bodied individual, and the marginalization, erasure, and violence that I have endured from it alone is devastating. In combination with my personal notions of gender, racial and sexual identity, I am fully immersed in otherness. There is so little discussion surrounding this, and little to no exploration of these topics in contemporary work, and I aim to push against that lack of representation. In my practice I am warping concrete, physical forms into highly disembodied abstractions. Through my work I aim to discuss the complexities of living within a body that is highly monitored, constantly examined, and made to feel like a specimen. Taking images that are recognizable as human forms, and reducing them to gestural forms is a juxtaposition of my own body's objectification and dissection. Being in hospital for as far back as I can remember, my condition has informed my conceptions of body and self. What are the implications of being told you are unhealthy, fragile, and defective from a young age? Click for larger view View full resolution 2 gallery shots from solo show, This is Not a Body 2022 Hunter Shaw Fine Art, Los Angeles Above: CrutchOpposite: the artist Image description opposite page: The artist, a Black woman with blonde dreadlocks, wears a white sleeveless T-shirt, black pants, and black boots. She is sitting in a blue wheelchair in front of a sunny window, looking at the camera. The floor is gray, the wall is white, and the window is next to a brick column. Above: Installation art of a medical bariatric crutch suspended sideways by red wires and a silver L racket, on a white wall with vents. [End Page 682] Click for larger view View full resolution How does the early and reinforced knowledge of decreased lifespan, and a life of increasingly poor health, pain, and bodily deterioration, influence the relationship between one and their body? Identity becomes a daunting concept when there is a rift formed between one's mind and their body, when the body seemingly functions with a mind of its own, malfunctioning and causing harm. Able-bodied individuals do not realize the supreme privilege in trusting and knowing their own body. Identity as we know it is so highly linked to bodily form and linked to aspects of bodily existence that are taken for granted. I aim to explore these questions, this region of identity, pushing to articulate my own fears, insecurities, and confusions around my illness-identity. My abstracted imaging of my own body is heavily influenced by being so regularly in the hospital, as I am constantly experiencing a very unique form of objectification in which my body is truly treated as a pound of flesh, the vitals that it produces, and the malfunctions it abounds in. In my performance work, I am pushing my own vulnerability and objectification to discuss the realities of mortality and fragility, and the complexities of empowerment in the face of literal powerlessness. Currently, I am contemplating the prosthetic, and the simultaneous abstraction and mechanization of the "body." [End Page 683] Click for larger view View full resolution Above: Performance and installation detail, receipt. Comfort and Care 2019 Opposite: Stills from video/performance work Not Better Yet 2019 VHS...