Sara J. Winston. Infusion. 2015-ongoing. Photographs.

Sara J. Winston’s Infusion makes use of an austere medical infusion suite as a backdrop for staged photographic reclamations of individual agency in the form of self-portraiture. In the regularity of Winston’s own infusion treatments, which had occurred “every 28 days, indefinitely,” and now, every 6 months, indefinitely, she has devised a ritual performance of self-set agency against the passiveness of machine-assisted patienthood. Winston leverages photography not only for its ability to make records but for its propensity to generate performance and representation in front of and around the lens. A posed distance from the camera, a body bent backwards, acrobatic movements performed across chairs sequence themselves into a reclamation of time and body, while nearby medical staff and an abundance of wires protruding from distance-prohibiting devices ground the images in an anticipation of the uncontrollable.

S_D/B: How, if at all, have you used your art practice to collect or create soft(qualitative) data on a lived experience (i.e: illness, pain, grief, trauma, etc.)?

SJW: To my knowledge I haven't, but I am trying to figure out how to do this.

S_D/B: If applicable, what kind of corresponding hard(quantitative) data had accumulated in relation to this lived experience?

SJW: Infusion appointment cards.

S_D/B: Has your creative practice altered, ameliorated, or otherwise defamiliarized your relationship with this lived experience? If so, how?

SJW: An infusion suite nurse told me once that "the only way to heal is to disassociate." I'm still learning how to do just that.