Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Category
Visual and Performing Arts (includes Creative Writing; sculpture, painting, video, dancing, music, reading, etc.)
Abstract/Artist Statement
For my third major artistic project focusing on abandoned human structures, Under the Skin is an interdisciplinary exploration of loss and trauma through silver gelatin photographs and a collection of original poems. I combine images of the decommissioned Air Force hospital in St. Marie, MT and free verse poems to explore how personal, intergenerational trauma lives within my queer body, and how my body is wrapped up in the medical sphere. This creative thesis compels the audience to consider the experiences we carry with us and how these ruptures and traumas can manifest in the body, particularly the queer body, and in language itself.
With financial assistance through the Ridge Scholarship and the Greta Wrolstad Travel Award, I traveled to St. Marie and photographed stirruped beds, overgrown nurseries, operating theaters, a morgue, and a basement crawlspace with military rations a family of coyotes has been stealing since the base’s abandonment in the 1970s. These images provide the tonal background and springboard for my poetry which focuses on abuse to women in the medical field, particularly my own experiences of not being believed, fear of childbirth, queer discrimination, dysmorphia, and the language used to discuss my body. I supplemented the autobiographical element with a literature review through the Ridge Collection to access medical terminology, legal cases of abuse to female and queer bodies, and stories of trauma survivors. This additional research puts my experience in conversation with the larger scope of this abuse and manipulation within the power dynamics of medicine.
The photographs offer access points for the viewer that are immediate and grounded, more relatable than specific narratives. The viewer can imagine themselves among the mold, and then dive into the more difficult, specific stories of trauma within the poetry. The interdisciplinary approach allows for marginalized narratives to be more accessible to the general public. I have struggled for years to convey my own trauma with language because of cultural contexts and shame surrounding discussions of abuse. This project creates a storytelling platform that presents realities in the medical sphere while also presenting these experiences with careful language and empathy.
I have no grand illusions that this project will create a wave of change and revolutionize the medical sphere and its practices, but this project does provide catharsis and speaks plainly of emotional, physical, and sexual trauma and how it manifests in the body without romanticizing or hiding behind academic jargon. Each member of the audience can have a personal revelation, a flicking of an inner switch as I discuss these subjects. Recognizing trauma and abuse plainly through direct discussion in poetry and tonal contexts in photography of the abandoned, vandalized hospital is important to my personal journey and to others’ self-perception. So often, we don’t realize something is wrong because it’s brushed aside or normalized; Under the Skin shows not just what is in my body, but what might be in someone else’s, creating a community with empathy and verbalizing loss and trauma while also critiquing the language we use to do so.
Mentor Name
Professor Keetje Kuipers
Personal Statement
When I entered the abandoned hospital in St. Marie, I took a deep breath, knowing it would be the last clean one for a long while. I had signed a waiver with the owner promising that if I became ill from the mold, moss, asbestos, or lead paint, I wouldn’t blame her. I held that lungful of air inside me for as long as I could. As I finally let go and inhaled the putrid air, I had no idea this project would be so critical to my path of recovery, to breathing easier in my daily life as a trauma survivor. At 23 years old, I have experienced shame almost constantly, an ulcer in my stomach that burned when an optometrist squeezed my breast, when my own hunger to please romantic partners turned toxic, when I was desperate to hear God after I was violated and never heard a word. As a photographer and writer, I have always used creative projects to process experiences. This project, however, made me investigate the meaning-making process, how language surrounding abuse is infused with shame, how I have internalized so much of it. I decided that photography would be a first step in an interdisciplinary project because the photographs do not have me in them. I never lived in the ghost city of St. Marie. There is no direct evidence of my trauma in the vandalized surgical ward or the NICU with its smashed windows and bassinet impressions in moldy carpet. But these images allowed me to look at my trauma in the echoes left behind. I saw myself in the stirrups of a birthing bed and finally addressed some of what had happened to me, slowly but firmly. These images then became springboards for me to access the shame and details of abuse that is much harder to avoid in written language. I wrote poetry that is largely autobiographical, with supplementary research and commonalities I found exploring the Ridge Collection. This was an incredibly cathartic process. I not only developed my interdisciplinary MFA thesis through this project, but also was able to address my personal history and how trauma is written into all the hidden corners of my body as a queer woman. This process helped me realize why it’s so critical to discuss these subjects openly both for my own recovery and to help others in similar positions. I thus decided to submit my writing to literary presses and have pieces forthcoming with Juked, Yalobusha Review, The MacGuffin, and The Chestnut Review. This has helped develop my publication history and exposure but, more importantly, has allowed me to heal. I hope it will open similar doorways for readers, just as the interdisciplinary project does for the audience through text and image. Under the Skin is incredibly important for trauma survivors. I have greatly honed my artistic and writerly skills to create a clear, communicative, and emotive project that shows not only my creative impulses, but a genuine approach to recovery that can reach out to a community that always needs more voices.
Graceffo oral presentation video
Under the Skin: Queer Trauma and the Medical Sphere
UC North Ballroom
For my third major artistic project focusing on abandoned human structures, Under the Skin is an interdisciplinary exploration of loss and trauma through silver gelatin photographs and a collection of original poems. I combine images of the decommissioned Air Force hospital in St. Marie, MT and free verse poems to explore how personal, intergenerational trauma lives within my queer body, and how my body is wrapped up in the medical sphere. This creative thesis compels the audience to consider the experiences we carry with us and how these ruptures and traumas can manifest in the body, particularly the queer body, and in language itself.
With financial assistance through the Ridge Scholarship and the Greta Wrolstad Travel Award, I traveled to St. Marie and photographed stirruped beds, overgrown nurseries, operating theaters, a morgue, and a basement crawlspace with military rations a family of coyotes has been stealing since the base’s abandonment in the 1970s. These images provide the tonal background and springboard for my poetry which focuses on abuse to women in the medical field, particularly my own experiences of not being believed, fear of childbirth, queer discrimination, dysmorphia, and the language used to discuss my body. I supplemented the autobiographical element with a literature review through the Ridge Collection to access medical terminology, legal cases of abuse to female and queer bodies, and stories of trauma survivors. This additional research puts my experience in conversation with the larger scope of this abuse and manipulation within the power dynamics of medicine.
The photographs offer access points for the viewer that are immediate and grounded, more relatable than specific narratives. The viewer can imagine themselves among the mold, and then dive into the more difficult, specific stories of trauma within the poetry. The interdisciplinary approach allows for marginalized narratives to be more accessible to the general public. I have struggled for years to convey my own trauma with language because of cultural contexts and shame surrounding discussions of abuse. This project creates a storytelling platform that presents realities in the medical sphere while also presenting these experiences with careful language and empathy.
I have no grand illusions that this project will create a wave of change and revolutionize the medical sphere and its practices, but this project does provide catharsis and speaks plainly of emotional, physical, and sexual trauma and how it manifests in the body without romanticizing or hiding behind academic jargon. Each member of the audience can have a personal revelation, a flicking of an inner switch as I discuss these subjects. Recognizing trauma and abuse plainly through direct discussion in poetry and tonal contexts in photography of the abandoned, vandalized hospital is important to my personal journey and to others’ self-perception. So often, we don’t realize something is wrong because it’s brushed aside or normalized; Under the Skin shows not just what is in my body, but what might be in someone else’s, creating a community with empathy and verbalizing loss and trauma while also critiquing the language we use to do so.