Anna Cowley Ford: Refrigerate Immediately / Package to be opened by patient ONLY!

From Charles Adams Gallery:

“Many disabling health conditions are invisible yet profoundly impact all aspects of one’s life. This invisible nature makes it difficult to convey the far-reaching effects on one’s quality of life and for others to empathize with those suffering. Even the medical industry tends to dismiss conditions that are non visible, not medically testable, or that disproportionately affect women. In her immersive and interactive installation, Refrigerate Immediately / Package to be opened by patient ONLY!, Anna Cowley Ford visually recreates the often-hidden sensations and effects of health conditions like ehlers-danlos syndrome, endometriosis, chronic migraines, fatigue, depression, and pain. The work, featuring animals devouring edible self-portrait busts, evokes the intense, surreal emotions and sensations these conditions create, such as the feeling of a skunk gnawing at one’s head or a crow pecking at one’s eye.

Anna Cowley Ford is an interdisciplinary artist from Eastland, Texas that draws from her personal experience with chronic health conditions to explore the bizarre and challenging world of chronic pain and disabilities. Her practice incorporates a wide range of media, including functional and sculptural ceramics, textiles, large-scale installations, video, and accumulated medical objects and documents. With a maximalist approach, Ford wants to overwhelm the viewer and for them to become hyper-aware of their own body and discomfort to communicate how health conditions are disabling on a chronic scale. In doing so, she hopes to spread awareness and advocate for disability rights, a more expansive definition of disabilities, and for its destigmatization within cultural media and political discourse.”