Grounded in my experience of chronic illness, my current body of work, Comfort Corners, merges bodily forms with elements of hospital design. Through abstracted figurative sculpture, I aim to render the often-invisible realities of illness and claim a place for the sick body within the lineage of figurative sculpture. Drawing from the fleshy plastics and softened edges of hospital design – and from the reclining nude in art history – my figures morph into use-objects that fail at their presumed functions: bodies become carts with wheels that will not turn and information screens that display only close-up textures of medical spaces. These failures, edged with humor, are balanced by gestures of care, such as an arm extended to lend support. Like myself after decades of treatment and surveillance, these works inhabit a tender and uncanny space between flesh and technology, between what is known and what is felt. 

My awareness of bodily physicality, shaped by lived experience, directs my material process. I work with gravity-laden materials, such as clay and gypsum, whose weight echoes the pull of flesh. The scarred surfaces created by my process are carefully smoothed, reflecting the effort to conceal imperfection while living with invisible illness. Photographs embedded in my sculptures mirror the perceptual experience of being a patient – glazed over in waiting rooms, hyper-attuned to minutiae, and imaged from the inside by advanced screening technologies.

Too often, the sick body is rendered either invisible or sensationalized. With Comfort Corners I resist both extremes, instead proposing vulnerability as a shared human condition, where fragility and resilience coexist, and where the sick body is central rather than marginal. By expanding how embodiment is represented, I hope to offer alternative imaginaries of dependency, adaptation, and survival; and to invite viewers to confront ableism, reconsider cultural narratives of illness, and reflect on their own experiences of fragility and care.                                                                             

-Ellie Krakow