Our Plague Years

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<center> {embed image: 'https://adelaide-blair-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Our_Plague_Years/Mae_Godwin.jpg'} Mae Godwin Alone [[More Info|image2info]]|[[Index|index]]|[[Next|Image3]] </center>

<center> {embed image: 'https://adelaide-blair-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Our_Plague_Years/Jessica_Campbell.jpg'} Jessica Campbell [in which I prove to you that you do not exist] [[Index|index]]|[[Next|Image4]] </center>

<center> {embed image: 'https://adelaide-blair-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Our_Plague_Years/Matthew_Parker.jpg'} Matthew Parker Jacked [[More Info|image4info]]|[[Index|index]]|[[Next|Image5]] </center>

<center> {embed image: 'https://adelaide-blair-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Our_Plague_Years/Erin_K_Schmidt.jpg'} Erin K. Schmidt hem/o [[More Info|image5info]]|[[Index|index]]|[[Next|Image6]] </center>

when i wear fibromyalgia i’d ask a volcano, pre-cum, if i could borrow a lip gloss shade in carnelian so it could contrast the third month of who would believe me? i’d take the hair down like a man-o-war, tentacles long enough to touch a storm in atlantis, bet you didn’t know it could rain in the deep blue sea, i wear it with next to nothing, flaunt it on a fresh piece of blackened crust, magma lessens, lessons on cool. i’d be cool enough to pull a synapse through my right cochlea and sew it into an invisible spaghetti strap. bow’d up. if you didn’t see, each pore grew floor length cilia, there’s a pair of pants made of twenty-seven hoya blossoming at the exact same five minutes. i wished you sawit happen,if you did, would you believe me? pain goes BLOOM! i would dye the nerves on pina fibers, play hide and seek with Maynila to find where indigo likes to tear duct. i’d wring out the psoas in a tub of hibiscus, set them at the crash-end of a waterfall steady beating, petals purple, back to open sky relief. i wear the pleading until it's overdone, trend set a banana leaf, stick the rice - wasn’t me. i wear flare like a butterfly sleeve that stand higher than sanity, i’d match it with 20lbs of purple sand on a california coast in january. i’d blow bubbles, borealis, glass frame my breasts til it was a chest that could breathe through shrinkwrap. i’d ask my grandmother for sugar cubes so i could learn how to bleed like a strawberry, down legs, cheeks, and sweet-toothed lips. i tell my lover to peel the nylon off my face and kiss-me-where-it-hurts, find me tissue-to-tissue, hope they don’t mind the sciatica’s sewing project: a man-o-war. i’d wear yesterday's body ache with a white river’s rush from the ice melt. today’s body chill cold fronts -             H             O             T                spring!          bottled             &     bothered <div style='border-top: 1px solid black;'></div> <center> nawa angel a.h. when i wear fibromyalgia [[More Info|image6info]]|[[Index|index]]|[[Next|Image7]] </center>

This is what it’s like And this is what it should be like What was I thinking When I crawled into this space And dragged my expectation To what’s never taken place? There is a tremolo to start At first a terror tremor One long panic attack she said But what happens after? A sort of euphoric state, a sort of Hazy glimmer And now there are prisms on the ceiling for you For you, for you I put these prisms on the ceiling One two, one two This is really beautiful I wish that you could see I wish that you could see it moving Can you? Can you see? I wish that you could see it moving I wish that you were me Everything’s a poem And everything is free I wish that you could see this moving I wish you knew you’re me Look at this place you’ve made for yourself You’ve done all this for you You put those prisms on the ceiling One two, one two This is a love poem This is what it’s supposed to be with you With you, with you I will not come out empty handed from you From you, from you I cannot come out empty handed Everything’s in two I thought that it was fragments But it’s fractals now instead Little fragments multiplied A prism in my head And that’s what love is I think I think, I don’t know I often swallow love up whole I cried so much through all of this Until I couldn’t feel But here you are on the ceiling You’re beautiful and real This is all so beautiful, just feel Just feel, just feel I lost you for a minute there Just feel Just feel Look at this thing you’ve made for yourself It’s beautiful, it’s real You put those prisms on the ceiling You made it real It’s real You thought you were having a bad trip You said that to me, you The worst nightmare you ever had You said that, not me, you Everything’s a poem and everything is new Everything’s a poem and everything is you This is what it’s like And this is what it should be like It should be you Be you Look at these prisms on the ceiling One two, one two <div style='border-top: 1px solid black;'></div> <center> Hexteria [[More Info|image9info]]|[[Index|index]]|[[Next|Image10]] </center>

I want to tell you how it felt to bike by the sea in Denmark. How it felt to be sitting on the knowledge that I’m sick again for months and just trying to live around it, live above it. Make a bridge of toothpicks and shoelace that I know will never hold my weight. I want to talk about constantly trying to get my head above water, the endless work of carving a path through deep water, breaking the surface with a flash that burns my lungs, desperation constantly pushing me to fight against that which never breaks. Limbs cast in iron. I want to talk about the airport where it was so crowded and loud that I had a heart spasm. Two pills on an empty stomach. I just wanted to get on that plane. I just wanted to fly away from it all. The world beneath us was all brown and dead from heat, a still and cloudless diorama. Dollhouse miniature of a parched August lawn. I want to talk about what it’s like to be in pain so often and for so many years that you don’t even notice it anymore. It’s not pain that is the surprise, but the absence of it. I want to talk about reading all afternoon in the stifling heat on the second floor of the guest house on an old corduroy couch with a fan blowing on me, knowing that I can’t go outside under the sun because I am too ill and because of this, being somewhere besides my own apartment feels stupid. The illness is becoming too strong, and soon, I won’t be able to pretend that I will ever be a regular person again, soon it must be addressed. It’s clearing its throat. It will be heard. But for now, there is the evening, which in the Danish summer lasts a very long time, and it is through this blue hue that I creep. I don’t go to the Michelin star restaurant down the road, I make fun of it. Food: what a fucking joke. I get sick eating a plain cheese pizza. The streets are filled with the sound of the ocean and I ache for the ocean all around me in a way that feels almost sexual in its intensity. I keep looking out the window to make sure it’s really there. I walk through the streets with the cluttered houses and cute fences and ramshackle gardens, my feet burning. Everyone’s last name is Kristensen according to little wood placards nailed to their porch. There are weathervanes and porthole windows and harbors filled with white boats. Whatever happens here, it feels like everyone is safe and never sad. It feels like everyone is blonde and walks out by the ocean at night with their dogs and is fine because of it. This seaside town feels empty as a movie set. When we go “downtown” to the grocery store, we’re surprised to find a paved over concrete strip mall and we feel robbed of European village authenticity. But none of that really matters. What matters is that I want so much to just be alive and well that I am happy to accept many bargains in exchange for it but, much to my dismay, that’s actually not how reality works. I’m trying so hard the force of it is breaking through my chest like a bone growth, out from my sternum, smashing through me like the fist of fucking God and I know it will never, ever matter but I am trying any way. So. In the evening we get on two bikes and go south down the bike trail that follows the sea. I wear a dress over a swimsuit. The coming darkness embraces me instead of burns me, for which I am grateful, and for a while I feel nothing but joy. I am so free in the wind, with my bare legs pumping, that sometimes I sing, whatever comes to mind, Blondie songs. I’ve spent so many years not knowing you could get all this goodness just from a bike! First, there is a lane of fancy houses on the ocean and when we go by them, I look in all the windows, unashamed, then we go up an incline and after that down past a different harbor, boats bobbing peacefully, and finally there’s only the fields and the blue, blue coast and the sound of water and the sound of wind and there’s no one around, the sun is almost down but not yet, even though it’s 9pm, its throbbing against the horizon like a red orange mess and it’s making the sky look like something you could love forever for as opposed to the stinging pain of hot white light for which you can feel nothing but dread and resentment, there’s sandy narrow strips of beaches out a ways in the water and cows and big swaying trees next to the road. The wind is in my ears and all around my whole body, something is touching me, and it is the motion I create by moving my legs on this weird, beautiful machine and this thing touching my whole body feels good and I get to feel this good feeling for minutes at a time. I feel like a person, like a girl. I want my boyfriend to throw the bikes aside when we stop and drink water and fuck me in the fields so that the sensation of good and alive never stops. I want to keep biking south, past Copenhagen and just keep going, maybe if I never get off this bike, maybe if I always follow the sea, that will cure me and be the thing, the magic thing that will heal me and then I can finally be the glowing girl on an alternative health blog who fixed it all with one weird trick and I could go back to my old, unappreciated body that seems so perfect to me now and I wouldn’t have to hate myself anymore and I wouldn’t have to rot, rot, rot in here like a fucking over ripe banana and I wouldn’t have to wonder anymore if I could ever love myself, if I could ever have just one week, maybe a month even? where I get to enjoy having a body and a brain. I know illness is coming for me but I am going to bike away from it. I’m going to hang a sign on my immune system: gone to the sea. On our way back we stop at the big beach and lay the bikes on the gravel and walk down to the salty water and take our clothes off. The water is the same temperature as lukewarm tea and so still it’s like a lake, almost impossible to believe this is really the ocean. Some of these nights it reflects a red moon like a sparkly drizzle of blood across the water and everything takes on the quality of a science fiction book jacket. The water is perfectly clear and clean and no matter how far out we go, only waist/chest high. The sky is purple. I sink to my knees. I want to live like this. They could leave me here, pickle me, out here in this temperate bath water sea. Maybe I could grow one long fish tail and swim away. I feel nothing out in the water, in the best of ways, a beautiful, salt blessed nothing and I look out at the flat horizon and hope this is what death feels like, being in a flat, bodiless sea under a lilac sky with the heliotrope reflection off the water making an unbroken cellophane surface all around you. I float on my back and look up at the sky, where God lives, and I cry. Salt into salt. Thank you. Fuck you. I’m grateful. I’m hurt. I don’t want to get out of the water. I don’t want to journey back toward the pain. I want a way out. Can’t you help me? You fucking fool who made me, you monkey, can’t you love me back just a little you motherfucker, can’t you give me a blessing that I can carry like a stone in my pocket? I want answers. I want to know why any of this was done. I want to know why there wasn’t just nature and fuck all to the rest. I want to know why I’m here and what there is to learn that isn’t just flinging myself through one thousand fucking plate glass windows. Please. Help me. Give me grace, maybe, just a little so I can live through it one more time and one more time after that. Explain to me why I never appreciated being being beautiful when I had the chance and why I didn’t fuck everyone I ever wanted to but instead had to go all the way down into the dark basement, find the ball of tangled Christmas lights and go numb and bloody trying to undo the knot. Will I ever be sorry enough or will I ever just not care and what does any of it matter in the face of the pain. The face of pain is like your face, consuming and indifferent to me. Bless me, bless me please, out here here in the water. I am baptized for you God of suffering and beauty and ruin and illness and abuse and wasted love and unrequited love and love unbidden and love unfulfilled and love forgotten and love abandoned and love spoilt and love unseen. God of the unused and useless, God of potential and forgiveness and piety and humility. Am I humble enough? Have I been humbled enough yet, for you? You have to hear me out because I’m going to need all of it. I’m going to need every last ounce. I’m going to need it all of it poured right, straight into me like a waterfall down my throat. I’m going to need everything you’ve got until you’re empty and I am full. <div style='border-top: 1px solid black;'></div> <center> Elinor Abbott Riding on a Bike by the Sea in Denmark [[More Info|image12info]]|[[Index|index]]|[[Next|Image13]] </center>

In October 2022, Nature magazine published an article titled Evolution of immune genes is associated with the Black Death. The bubonic plague epidemic in the 14th century killed about half of Europe, and many survivors had a genetic variant that allowed them to mount a more robust autoimmune response. That's not great now, because that same gene variation is present in many current-day sufferers of autoimmune diseases. I thought it would be interesting to curate an art show where people with autoimmune issues make work about the black plague called The Dreadful Visitation.* This show will take place in Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington later this summer (2025). As part of that project, there will be some online events, of which this is the first. This show, Our Plague Years,* has a much looser set of parameters; folks with autoimmune diseases were invited to send in work about whatever they wanted. Unsurprisingly, most pieces deal with the body, exploring intimacy, loss, isolation, pain, and distance. However, this is neither a sad show or one that celebrates an overly sentimental "Triumph of the Human Spirit." It's a clear-eyed look at what it means to live with an immune system that is running out of control. <center> [[START HERE|Image1]] </center> *The titles of both shows are taken from books about the plague by Daniel Defoe: A Journal of the Plague Year, and The Dreadful Visitation: in a Short Account of the Progress and Effects of the Plague, the Last Time it Spread in the City of London in the Year 1665.

Title: Borne Aloft Size: 11 x 8 x 9 inches Medium: Found wood, ceramic, twine, acrylic medium, acrylic paint This piece is part of a larger body of work exploring the theme of ‘home’. Many of the pieces are a combination of found objects (more often than not pieces of wood) and ceramic. The works swim in the relationship between what is real and what is imagined. "Borne Aloft" is a piece about what we carry around with us every day—things that may appear beautiful and shiny but which may be very heavy and often inescapable. Artist: Jennifer Hernandez Jennifer Fernandez is a Cuban-American multidisciplinary artist based in Seattle, Washington. She is the recipient of the Edwin T. Pratt Scholarship, a grantee of the City of Seattle's Office of Arts & Culture, and has been the Featured Artist at the Frye Art Museum Store. Her sculptures have exhibited nationally. <center> [[Next Artist|Image2]] </center>

Title: Alone Medium: Photograph Baths have been a comforting thing for me in my chronic pain for a long time. If I'm going to be in pain, at least I could be in a relaxing environment. But I also feel it illustrates my sanity slipping away as the water carries me. When I sink down underneath, the weight and all surrounding water represents the overwhelm, the drowning, I feel from not having control over my symptoms. The water isolates me as my chronic pain has from others. Artist: Mae Godwin Mae Godwin is a fine art photographer with several chronic illnesses. She uses photography to document her experiences with debilitating diseases and the loneliness that surrounds her. This process has been very therapeutic for her as well for her audience members that can relate. Water is often used as a metaphor. Water has much duality as a substance that can give life and take it away, to relieve suffering and cause it, to overwhelm and also give peace. Water can also abstract. Memories, dreams, emotions, the subconscious are all abstract elements that are hard to define and the use of water, prisms, and other ways to distort the image in camera cane help illustrate these abstract elements. <center> [[Next Artist|Image3]] </center>

Title: Jacked Size: Approx. 16 X 20 X 20 Medium: Sculpture Two foam rocks placed on top of standing jacks. Artist: Matthew Parker Matthew Parker is a disabled multimedia artist [B. 1991] that works in sculpture, photography, and installation. Parker’s artistic practice explores the nature of making bodies of work without a working body. He uses foam boulders to create physical barriers in spaces while interspersing a variety of smaller works between them. He often reinterprets artistic movements through the lens of disability and mobility. Parker has recently shown work at Coffin Farm [Redmond], Specialist [Seattle], and his storage unit 1A47 [Seattle]. Parker earned a BFA in Visual Art from Cornish College of the Arts, and resides in Seattle. In his free time he enjoys rocks, computers, and quiet. <center> [[Next Artist|Image5]] </center>

Title: hem/o Size: 1”x 1” x 6” Medium: Artists’ Book Hem- and hemo- are the medical prefixes meaning blood. A small center bound book is housed inside a glass test tube lined with red flocked paper which resembles the thick, velvety appearance of blood after it has been drawn into a test tube. Printed in deep red on each page of the book is either a medical prefix describing blood or a medical prefix specific to women’s reproductive health. Medical terms describing procedures and diagnoses surrounding women's health issues fill the pages. After many unsuccessful visits with my primary care physician, it was my gynecologist who suggested I might have an autoimmune disease, and ordered bloodwork that would indicate any markers. Much of the text is difficult to read as it moves on the page in a chaotic manner. The text within represents the swirling emotions and the confusing conversations with doctors prior to and when receiving an unexpected diagnosis. Artist: Erin K. Schmidt Erin K. Schmidt earned her BFA from Michigan State University, and her MA in Book Arts from Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and can be found in private and public collections including Tate Britain, Oxford University, RISD, and Yale University. She was awarded the Sheffield International Artists’ Book Prize. And, in 2023 she was awarded a Kresge Artist Fellowship for Book Arts. <center> [[Next Artist|Image6]] </center>

Title: Not For You Size: LxWxH inches 3.75x5.25x13.75 Medium: Ceramic This piece explores how quickly something can become inaccessible. Artist: Darah Lundberg My name is Darah Lundberg. I am a ceramicist based in Portland. I make mostly functional tableware but enjoy toying with functionality or lack there of. The juxtapositions of life are always fascinating to me. I love to explore this territory with thought and art. <center> [[Next Artist|Image8]] </center>

Title: Kait 24x36 inches Medium: Oil on canvas Artist: Ash Sanders Spross Ash Sanders Spross is a multimedia artist who was raised in the Sonoran desert, in the city of Tucson. She’s now located in Portland, Oregon—where she draws inspiration from the forest and coast line around her. Ash’s current focus is on photography, writing and illustrating. Facing autoimmune diseases hasn’t been easy but she has learned to cope through her creative process since she was young. <center> [[Next Artist|Image9]] </center>

Title: neuraesthenia Size: 113.5 x 13.5 inches Medium: hand embroidered cotton on linen Neuraesthenia or "nervous exhaustion" is an outdated term for mylagic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). This piece, part of my symptomatology series, is an attempt to depict the utter exhaustion and neurological overwhelm that happens with post-exertional malaise (PEM), the hallmark symptom of ME/CFS. Artist: Lia Pas Lia Pas is a disabled Canadian multidisciplinary artist working in image, text, and sound exploring body and states of being. Her embroideries have been featured in numerous online galleries, on the cover of the anthology Sharp Notions, and in the SKArts permanent collection. <center> [[Next Artist|Image12]] </center>

Title: Let Me Touch You Instead Size: 10 x 13.75 inches Medium: Stone Lithography Stone lithograph print that was inserted between cheap copy paper of well loved porn magazines, drawn on with pink pens. Questions about value, cis gay erotica, power and print and the act of selling, and inserting trans experience into cis male dominated spaces. Artist: Achilles Braziel Achilles explores themes of power, consent, BDSM, and the cisgender voyeur through vampires and angels. His work has a focus on texture from real objects, creating a physicality to the work in the interest of bringing physical media into digital spaces. <center> [[Next Artist|Image14]] </center>

Title: The Ace of Wands Medium: Collage, graphite The Ace of Wands indicates that now is the time to start. Even if my joints hurt and I have fatigue, there is no better time. Artist: Adelaide Blair Adelaide Blair is a project-based artist whose research-centered practice allows her to interact with and learn about the world. Her work involves publishing, printmaking, web design, needlework, drawing, writing, performance, and filmmaking. She is also interested in distributed intelligence and how people make art together, and many of her projects involve elements of collaboration or participation. Her subject matter has included ghosts, artificial intelligence, the Greek tragedy Philoctetes, reproductive terms used in printmaking, the Dirty War in Argentina, and networks of corruption in the contemporary art world. <center> [[Back to First Image|Image1]]|[[Index|index]]|[[Show Notes|Hello]] </center>

Title: when i wear fibromyalgia Writer: nawa angel a.h. nawa angel a.h., widely known as Moonyeka, is a chimeric creator working across containers of performance, qt nightlife, writing,experimental media and the divine. They're a settler fluttering between their sprawling roots amidst Tongva, Chumash, Chinook, and Duwamish lands. Moonyeka conjures queer erotic joy, animism, Ilocano imagination, and beyond. They center kilig as a compass to imagine thriving worlds for their communities. Moonyeka has the honor of homing into their interdisciplinary instigations as an Artistic Director of House of Kilig. i was never the siren (2024) is a film re-myth of the Siren archetype; the first installment of their multimedia project 'Harana for the Aswang' realized with House of Kilig collaborators. waling-waling palpitations is the second installment (forthcoming 2025 with First Matter Press), debuting as a hybrid-memoir book with live-visual-dance elements along their book tour. nawa draws upon queer and trans performance technologies in their writing, infusing nightlife, icon-myth-legend, drag, and kink. They work across a spectrum of genre: biomythography, hybrid, and the game writing. Recent publications include their multiverse of work centering Waling-Waling Orchids in smoke and mold; "am i hot enough to kill?", an excerpt of (w)horrific hybrid prose, is featured in The Holy Hour Anthology by Working Girls Press. They're currently a curated writer for Khôra. <center> [[Next Artist|Image7]] </center>

Writer: Hexteria Hexteria (Tonya Pieske) is a multidisciplinary musician and writer based in Portland, Oregon. A visually-led creator at heart, Hexteria draws inspiration from modern cinema and other media forms. Her latest record, "Erotic Thriller", was heavily influenced by ‘90s erotic thriller films, translating their visual and emotional themes into the concept, composition, and production. "Erotic Thriller: The Book" was released as a narrative companion to the album, offering an immersive listening experience and incorporating other complimentary poetry and prose. Her previous releases include the experimental 5-track EP "Passion Aggressive" and the full-length album "Psychic Tantrum". In August 2024, she released the single "Runneth Over". More of her poetry can be found <a target="_blank" rel="relation_name"href="https://www.hexteriamusic.com/poetry">here</a>. <center> [[Next Artist|Image10]] </center>

Title: Size: 2.5 x 1.15 in Medium: Pill bottle, resin, coloring, old pills, injection bottle These pieces were made while I was in the process of recovery from my autoimmune disease and helped me really grapple with what I had gone through. Artist: Mikki Ulaszewski Mikki is an artist, curator, and content creator currently based in Seattle, WA. With a background in photography and over 10 years in graphic design roles, they moved to Seattle to pursue art as a full time job. Mikki truly believe in making the world better, one piece of art at a time. After a decade working in different sectors of industry, they realize that art can really create change. In 2025, they plan to continue my growth as an artist; working with new and recycled materials, creating art for arts sake, and creating opportunities for other in the art space. <center> [[Next Artist|Image11]] Additional images <img src="https://adelaide-blair-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Our_Plague_Years/mikki/mikki_1.jpg" style="width:70%;"> <img src="https://adelaide-blair-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Our_Plague_Years/mikki/mikki_3.jpg" style="width:70%;"> <img src="https://adelaide-blair-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Our_Plague_Years/mikki/mikki_4.jpg" style="width:70%;"> <img src="https://adelaide-blair-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Our_Plague_Years/mikki/mikki_6.jpg" style="width:70%;"> <img src="https://adelaide-blair-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Our_Plague_Years/mikki/mikki_8.jpg" style="width:70%;"> <img src="https://adelaide-blair-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Our_Plague_Years/mikki/mikki_11.jpg" style="width:70%;"> </center>

Title: Riding on a Bike by the Sea in Denmark I wrote this following a trip to Denmark where I attempted for a week to live as a normal person does as much as I possibly could, by this I mean that I tried to simply go on a beach side summertime vacation. The result of this was a long period of reduced mobility followed by the introduction of very intense medication which helped in some ways but greatly limited me in others. This was 2018 and it was the last time I felt well enough to ride a bike. It was also when I realized that I would no longer be able to travel at all during the spring and summer months as the heat and sun makes traveling far too dangerous for me. When you're chronically ill and disabled it is difficult to let go of attachment after attachment to the world of wellness and normality. You try and hold on, you try until you realize the holding is more painful than the letting go. This essay was me saying good-bye to another aspect of my life as it was which would never return. This essay originally appeared in Entropy magazine in 2019. Writer: Elinor Abbott Elinor Abbott is a Pushcart Prize nominated American writer living in Scotland. You can find her on Substack @sadandfamous and at elinor13.com <center> [[Next Artist|Image13]] </center>