Megan Bent

I Live in Crip Time
2021
Archival inkjet print from chlorophyll print scans
30" x 30"
$500 original, $200 for a 20" x 20" print
Website: meganbent.com
Connecticut, USA

VO by Mari Weiss

ABOUT THE ARTWORK:

Chlorophyll printing is a process that prints images onto leaves through photosynthesis.
http://meganbent.com/i-dont-want-to-paint-a-silver-lining-around-it-1

STATEMENT:

Since the spring of 2020, I have been documenting the experience of being chronically ill and immune-suppressed in the pandemic while the outside world demands that people like me are acceptable losses for personal convenience or for corporate profit. The printed images illustrate the prolonged solitude of a year plus in lock down. The text stamped directly into the leaves conveys the dialogue between the administrative and public messaging to the Disability Community and my private thoughts and responses. I employ chlorophyll printing, which uses UV light to print photographic images directly onto leaves, to explore my experience of chronic illness and how illness/disability is represented in society. I am interested in the disconnection between the way disability is most often understood as a purely negative experience and the way the fragility of nature is seen with a lens of reverence. The chlorophyll printing process (where one print/exposure may take anywhere from 8- 72 hours) relies on flexibility, interdependence with nature, and echoes my experience of Crip Time; living in a body/mind that values slowing down, connection, and care over speed and production. The action of printing representations of disability onto leaves highlights the organic nature of disability, re-framing it as a part of human diversity. The fact that chlorophyll prints are impermanent, and will continue to decay over time, asks the viewer to confront the interdependence and bodily impermanence we all share.

DESCRIPTION:

I Live in Crip Time
Words adorn a pale yellow, oval leaf. The horizontal leaf has a splotch of dark green that angles up from the left to the upper right. A drop of dark green creates a drip near the bottom, slightly to the right of the middle of the leaf. On a narrow dark green band mid-way on the left side of the leaf are pale yellow letters: In Crip Time.

-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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The Opulent Mobility license refers to the exhibit and its audio descriptions. Individual artworks are the property of the individual artists.