Oil on Linen on Birchwood
60 x 40 cm
‘If Only’ is a self-portrait that conveys my experience of being consumed by endometriosis and adenomyosis. I know pain always passes, and I will pick myself back up again, but at the peak of pain, I lose my sense of mental resilience and hope. This work captures that frozen moment.
It also references the dominant clinical practice that “what we can see is definitive evidence that it exists, we can fix or remove. What we can not see or is not shown is potential evidence that it does not exist”. Through this painting, I wanted to communicate about this prevalent clinical attitude in our culture, which poses as a huge psycho-social barrier for a person living with pain.
Many doctors had said to me that they couldn’t find anything that would cause any pain and so concluded that I shouldn’t feel any pain. I felt as though I was driven mad, with no one believing anything I said. Was it the pain that was driving mad, or was it that not being believed was driving mad?
Pain without acknowledgement. Pain without permission. Pain without rules. Pain without honour. I used to experience all-consuming and maddening bouts of pain. In these delirious moments, I could not distinguish what was rational or irrational thoughts going through my head.
I am dressed in a traditional Korean petticoat, which can also be read as a traditional Korean funeral dress, signifying vulnerability and mourning. As a diasporic Korean-Australian woman, I find the symbolism of wearing only the bottom half of the dress somewhat lost in translation within Western culture, paralleling the breakdown in communication and understanding for someone living with pain and chronic illness.
I used to rock back and forth on my bed, sitting in the posture you see in the painting. I was sure I would find something that was drastically wrong once I opened it up. I was sure I would see something monstrous sitting in there destroying my organs, which must have been hiding somewhere deep inside during each medical examination.
I believed I would be able to see the monster and tear it out with my fingers to finally find relief. I was convinced that these actions would be less painful than what I had been experiencing. I turned my back to conceal myself from the viewer, overwhelmed by agony, helplessness, and shame for these irrational thoughts.
The bright, cold spotlight froze me hunched over, with my legs bared, caught in this private moment of desperation, contemplating self-harm in an effort to self-treat, as if I were being interrogated about the nature of my thoughts by the clinical, unempathetic atmosphere of the room.
This dark and desperate moment was an existentially challenging point in time when I doubted whether my next thought or action could be rationally trusted, and my pain had become so unbearable that I was considering slicing open my own stomach.
The black organic shape under the table was an alien, pernicious entity, far more than a shadow or spilled blood. This shape had been a silent witness, evidence, and the gatekeeper to my pain – for no one would acknowledge its existence, and likewise, it would not speak up to save me from my madness. It had a life of its own, and it always appeared in my direst moments.
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It has been several years since I was haunted by this entity. It appears in many forms here and there in my dreams, but it is where it stays. A place I can see with kindness. The manifestation of my most intimate pain.
