The tools we are given when something is broken vary greatly in both efficiency and appropriateness. And what we view as broken depends on our view of what is good and whole and acceptable. Often when we try to fix what is broken, we only end up fixing what’s visible and ignore the rest. Even our idea of what broken looks like is a highly problematic one. I’m beginning to think deep healing happens only when we let go of the idea of fixes and repairs as well as our ideas of what anything this abstract looks like.

The February theme for the #areyoubookenough challenge is ‘heal’. This artists’ book is a repair kit. I wouldn’t recommend using it. More info below.

In this repair kit there’s 1) a vintage compact case (with some original powder) that holds a photo diptych book of two poorly framed self-portraits - the look was inspired by the glamorous shots of 1950’s beauties with their shawl collars and sparkly earrings, 2) a vintage Optimal tin filled not with the original pills used literally “for aches” (be they in your teeth or your uterus, or something to do with how much you had to drink last night) even though they, too, were known to cause addiction and have since been withdrawn from use, but with some long expired benzodiazepine prescribed to me for panic attacks - the pills are wrapped in Japanese tissue dyed blue and sewn into place with pink thread. The repair kit case and the little book are both covered with pale pink silk fabric cut from vintage underwear, torn and much repaired, as well as some matching satogami paper. The repair kit title was typed on a typewriter directly onto fabric.

This month my work was heavily influenced by the art and literature I’ve surrounded myself with. First off, a key source of inspiration for my next book of poetry are female portraits I’ve fallen in love with - this means I’ve spent hours and hours in the company of some fictitious-to-me-at-least ladies from the 19th and 20th centuries, picking apart how I should feel about the way they’ve been portrayed - often by male artists in and for the male gaze tradition and in a way that makes it clear to me the painting is first of all a work of fiction. Secondly, most books I’ve read lately have dealt with how women are portrayed at some very different times in history: the wonderful Kirsikoita lumessa by Sanna Tahvanainen (originally Körsbär i snön - the Finnish translation I read is by Jaana Nikula) is a novel about Sylvia Plath’s summer in New York in 1953, and during that summer our fictitious Sylvia of multitudes is just about to write a novel, worries about appropriate clothing, deals with anxiety, pops pills and, in so many ways, struggles to play the part of a perfectly composed magazine intern; Katie-Kate, a novel written by my dear friend Anu Kaaja, explores the very different ways we view Kate Middleton / Duchess of Cambridge and Katie Price / Jordan, whilst telling the story of a young woman who ends up working as an au pair of sorts for an older royalist couple who see her as a Kate Middleton / Duchess of Cambridge lookalike; and Leijonapatsailla by Aura Nurmi is an intense poetry book about the life of a 15-year-old girl becoming a young woman in a world that does not make it (or anything) easy for her - her story takes place at the time when Sandstorm became a worldwide hit (that’s year 2000, in case you’ve forgotten).

So. Women. More than anything, at all eras, there seem to be some very clear ideas of how women should behave and what they should look like. So many ideas, in fact, we all seem to be doomed right from the start. Thankfully we have all kinds of potions and solutions to heal our natural cracks so we can find ourselves just a little bit closer to being the ideal women. There are ways to cover the unsightly and dull the inappropriate. How it relates to healing is an entirely different matter.

You can view a video of this artists’ book in my hands right here.