Anna Cowley Ford

 Anna Cowley Ford uses her personal experience with Chronic Migraine and pain to create work that speaks to larger issues of disability, mental health, and chronic invisible illness. Using materials such as clay, video, medical objects and documents, she illuminate the social and domestic impacts of chronic conditions and expound upon the sensory experiences that occur with migraines and pain. She strives to spread awareness and engage in a conversation about the effects of chronic invisible illness. 

One of my favourite of her work is her 'Chronic Pathway' series, in which Cowley Ford marks the areas of pain and where it travels to and from on her body in intricate henna designs, symbolic of the correlation with the concept of beautiful, ornate imagery and patterns being difficult and painful to experience (for example, doesn't staring at a kaleidoscope for too long make you feel sick?).

The intricacies of pain, and the visualisation of pain, is what makes it so difficult to imagine if not suffered. There are so many different types, and much of human pain experienced is invisible. Through art, we can finally see the specificity of someone's pain that they may struggle to describe with words.

I also appreciate how Cowley Ford is so specific in using her body as a canvas to help illustrate the formation of pain within herself, instead of on an abstract page. She even makes moulds of her face to make more destructive works depicting migraine pain specific to the head and face.

https://annacowleyford.com/migraine-pain-work