Behind the Blue Gown: Artist’s Statement

I am, on many counts, alive today thanks to the Canadian medical system. I am hugely grateful to the many doctors, nurses, and other hospital personnel I have encountered on my journey and whose ministrations have brought me back from the brink on more than one occasion.

But…

Medical trauma is real, and it is not always solely the result of the medical condition. In my experience, there is something that happens when you shed your street clothes and don the blue gown: like any uniform, it has a way of erasing individual identity. Regardless of whatever and whoever you were before you put on the gown, you are now a Patient. And expected to BE patient, while the System does its thing.

I have had dismissive and dehumanizing things said to me by medical professionals while I was trying to get medical help. I don’t think the individual speakers necessarily thought the things they were saying were problematic, but the effect was at best unhelpful, at worst demoralizing.

Behind the Blue Gown is an experimental quilt expressing this experience of identity loss in a medical setting. An actual hospital gown is hand quilted to a background suggestive of the curtains that hang between hospital beds to offer the illusion of privacy. Scrawled in black ink across the surface of the gown are actual things that have been said to me, and to others close to me, by doctors and nurses – mostly doctors. The effect of these statements on me was always to make me feel that who I was as a person, and what I was actually experiencing in the moment, did not matter. It is hard to be a whole human being when you have been reduced to a bundle of symptoms itemized on a chart. It is even harder when the medical profession has been thoroughly trained to zero in on the simplest and most obvious explanation for your symptoms, while what you have going on is something altogether more complex.

The quilt is intended to be interactive. I want you to touch it. I want you to get up close and move the fabric around so you can read what was said. And then I want you to untie the ties to see that inside the gown looks very different than the scribbled black ink on the outside. Inside is colour and diversity and complexity. It is needle-turned applique letters that spell out facets of who I was as a person when those things were being said to me. I was there all along, but, with a few notable exceptions, the doctors could not see the complex person behind the gown. Or would not. Or perhaps were trained not to.

Some details to take note of:

·        The small nametag patch near the neckline that reads “Hello I am In Pain” was printed by Winnipeg printmaker Andee Penner (sewdandee).

·        The curtain background is quilted in straight lines that “stay in their lane.” By contrast the inside of the gown is quilted in freehand swirls that curl around the letters and fill in the negative space with a more organic feel.

·        The blue threads from the inside of the gown trail off, unfinished, at the bottom of the gown to reflect the way one’s identity can begin to unravel in an institutional setting.

My dream for this piece is for it to be seen by medical professionals. If it provokes one doctor to pause and reflect deeply on the things they have said to patients, perhaps that will make a difference to someone else who is feeling lost behind a blue gown.