Migraines

"Science has for too long carried the privilege of telling the story of sick bodies and doctors of carrying the voice of the sick." Laurie Charles in her research project The Illness Narratives - tools for narrative and artistic emancipation, PDR-FRArt, 2023.

In 2016 Laurie Charles was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. During the many medical tests and scans that followed, she gained an intimate knowledge of her body. This experience had a profound impact and made the human body, as well as its examination and representation since the Middle Ages, one of the principal themes in her work.

Migraines is composed of two strips of fabric. They catch the eye with their (violet) pop-colours and motifs, which are familiar elements in her work, as well as the numerous references to history and the symbolic. The silhouettes are almost life-sized images of Laurie Charles’ own body. The first strip maps out the organs like a geographic area, resembling medieval depictions of the body or today’s holistic practice of body mapping. On the second strip, the organs have been removed and put outside of the body. This refers to the expression "corps sans organes", which was coined by the artist Antonin Artaud in 1947, as well as Laurie Charles’ own trauma. The anatomical shapes, moon cycles and hands are recurring motifs, as are the pills and spoons. The latter refer to medication and to Christine Miserandino’s Spoon Theory* (2003), an essay about people living with chronic illness and their energy levels. Migraines sees the artist reclaiming her own body from the language of science and imposed norms.

* In Spoon Theory, the spoon is used as a metaphor to describe the amount of mental and physical energy that a person living with chronic illness has available.