Joy Murray
Desire Seemed to Expand
2020
Acrylic paint, mixed media
24” x 18”
$1000
Website: joymurray.com
Tennessee, USA
2020
Acrylic paint, mixed media
24” x 18”
$1000
Website: joymurray.com
Tennessee, USA
ARTIST INTERVIEW with ASL interpretation:
ABOUT THE ART:
Loneliness expands in the isolation of disability.
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
“I’ve used the arts to help navigate life, cope with a long term disability -- to find enchantment and insight… I like to encourage everyone to get on with their creative work. We all have unique stories to tell in unique ways. There are so many ways we are told through our lives to conform, to be quiet, and to not stir up trouble. I hope to resist that in my life and to help others resist. What we hide, what we cloak in shame, becomes toxic and keeps us from living fully. We are meant to learn and share our thoughts all through our lives. I hope to do what it takes to keep my sense of wonder alive and to report it back to you. I've had hereditary Spasmatic Paraparalysis, a degenerative neurological disorder similar to Multiple Sclerosis, since I was 16. I've graduated from using a cane, then a walker, and now a wheelchair. I also have a mild bi-polar disorder that leans to the depressive side.”
DESCRIPTION:
Desire Seemed to Expand
Against a dark starry background, a naked woman sits in a gold power wheelchair. She has a pink complexion, blue eyes and faces us. A billowing scarf encircles her head and floats around her. The scarf has a pattern of feathers in shades of blue on a gold or pale-yellow background. The scarf threads through the fingers of one hand that rests just below her chin. Her other hand rests on one knee with the scarf flowing across her lap partially obscuring her pubic hair. She has a tattoo of three white flowers on her chest. White letters run along the blue edges of the scarf: “So many desires would go unmet”, “Nerve endings died but pain remained”, “She lost feeling and nerve endings died but pain remained”, and “Desire seemed to expand”.
-art description by Teri Grossman
Against a dark starry background, a naked woman sits in a gold power wheelchair. She has a pink complexion, blue eyes and faces us. A billowing scarf encircles her head and floats around her. The scarf has a pattern of feathers in shades of blue on a gold or pale-yellow background. The scarf threads through the fingers of one hand that rests just below her chin. Her other hand rests on one knee with the scarf flowing across her lap partially obscuring her pubic hair. She has a tattoo of three white flowers on her chest. White letters run along the blue edges of the scarf: “So many desires would go unmet”, “Nerve endings died but pain remained”, “She lost feeling and nerve endings died but pain remained”, and “Desire seemed to expand”.
-art description by Teri Grossman
Presented by USC Visions and Voices. Organized by Pamela Schaff (Medical Education, Family Medicine, and Pediatrics), Julie Van Dam (French and Italian), Erika Wright (Medical Education and English), Sabrina Derrington (Pediatrics), and Ron Ben-Ari (Internal Medicine and Medical Education). Co-sponsored by the Keck School of Medicine’s HEAL (Humanities, Ethics, Art, and Law) Program and the Center for Bioethics at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
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Opulent Mobility by A. Laura Brody is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
The Opulent Mobility license refers to the exhibit and its audio descriptions. Individual artworks are the property of the individual artists.