Artist Statement
“I slide back into the pain spiral” explores the somatic experiences of chronic pain and disability caused by Temporomandibular Disorder (TMD).
TMD is a chronic condition with severe pain, inflammation and arthritic changes in the jaw joints. In many cases, the cartilage disc, located between the skull bone and the jaw bone, that is vital for the smooth movement of the jaw, gets badly damaged. This leads to bone-on-bone grinding inside the jaw joint and triggers debilitating pain and discomfort such as facial spasms, jaw muscle disfunction, joint inflammation, migraines, shoulder and neck pain and difficulty in speaking, laughing, talking and even breathing [1].
Chronic pain is inherently complex, multi-dimensional, hyper-subjective and defiant of definitions. The suffering it causes requires a multi-modal approach for translation. “I slide back into the pain spiral” is an attempt to translate the lived experience of TMD through four inter-related frames:
(1) The drawing created in response to a TMD pain flare-up
(2) The words spontaneously written within the drawing in response to the pain flare-up
(3) The audio recording of these words
(4) Fragments of the molecular genetics landscape that represent intense suffering caused by chronic pain and disability
A pure contour drawing of the Temporomandibular joint was outlined on paper while suffering from a TMD flare-up. Emotions, bodily sensations and perseverations flowed unfiltered from the limbic system to fingertips to spontaneously form the shapes, words and sounds of this hybrid work. The process acted as a form of raw release of cellular memory. A way to override the limitations of the analytical brain and its inability to fully release unprocessed suffering trapped in the mind and body.
The sequences pasted in this work belong to a 22-nucleotide microRNA, miRNA-140-5p, found in the human genome [2]. This microRNA plays an important role in cartilage disc regeneration of the jaw joint and is a considered to be potential therapeutic target for treating jaw joint osteoarthritis [3].
The accompanying audio recording is of the writing that was spontaneously scribbled into the TMD drawing through automatism. I refrain from doing any editing of the initial writing that spills out. The aim is to preserve the raw integrity of the suffering. The faint clicking sounds you hear in the audio recording are coming from the dysfunctional jaw joint.
References:
- Pigozzi LB. et al. Quality of life in young and middle age adult temporomandibular disorders patients and
asymptomatic subjects: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Health Qual Life Outcomes. 2021. - https://mirbase.org/mature/MIMAT0000431
- Duan L. et al. Recent progress on the role of miR-140 in cartilage matrix remodelling and its implications
for osteoarthritis treatment. Arthritis Res Ther. 2020.
Ashwini Bhasi is a bioinformatician and interdisciplinary artist from Kerala, India. Her hybrid work merges scientific data, creative writing and visual art to explore the lived experience of chronic illness and disability. Ashwini has over 18 years of professional experience analyzing large-scale human genome datasets to identify genetic markers and mutations in hereditary disorders and cancers. She is the first-author of multiple peer-reviewed research articles that address the growing need for user-centered software design for scientific discovery. A Tin House Summer Workshop Scholar, Ashwini is the recipient of the Shaw Memorial Poetry Prize from Dunes Review, a Good Hart Artist Residency, a Voices of Color Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and a Room Project Fellowship. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Iowa Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, DIAGRAM, Redivider, Frontier Poetry, Honey Literary, RHINO, The Offing and elsewhere. Musth, the winner of the 2020 CutBank chapbook contest, is her first poetry collection.
You can explore her work here: https://linktr.ee/ashwinibhasi