​

​

A trailer of the triptych video installation piece Goosebumps

​

Lasting only five minutes and thirty seconds Goosebumps takes you on a sensory and serene journey of exploration and adaptation. This finely orchestrated triptych showcases the experience of returning to one’s body after cancer from an autobiographical perspective. The juxtaposition of sterile hospital flashbacks and immersive natural waterscapes offers a small glimmer of hope as I, the artist, realign with my female body post operation.

​

This project was conceived by chance as I happen to admire my goosebumps during a fleeting moment captured on film. This simple act of survival gives me a surge of warmth and appreciation after many months of cancer and infection using my human form as a battleground subsequently resulting in an emergency hysterectomy. As I grieve my old body, I feel a sense of loss. A loss of femininity, a de-sexualisation and a lack of maternity. My goosebumps gave me a glimmer of hope for what the future could hold and an overwhelming sense of gratitude that I was gifted with time to slowly adapt to my alienated body and build an appreciation for what it could be.

​

The documentation of my wild swims became a cathartic act of reclamation after repeatedly handing myself over to medical professionals to have parts of myself taken away. The biological experience of goosebumps has many triggers such as cold, strong emotions, fear, joy and has sensual connotations, all fitting of the journey of undergoing cervical cancer and hysterectomy. 

​

Gathering footage I begun to fixate on one tiny moment captured on film. Videoing a leaf under the November water, the leaf by chance passes my arm drawing attention of myself and the camera to my arm and goosebumps. As I admire my bodies simple act of keeping me alive, a surge of warmth and appreciation washes over me. A realisation hits that my body is not the enemy after all. We are indeed, on the same side. The moment was fleeting, seconds at most, and had I not captured this moment, it would have been lost and forgotten as quickly as it had came. Goosebumps was expanded on this fleeting moment and my thought process since. 

 

​

​