Sick Daddy, is a 1000mL saline bag cinched tightly by a leather collar with attached metal letters spelling “Sick Daddy” that hangs from a metal chain with a metal lock on both ends. The weight of the IV bag and the cinching from the leather collar calls to mind fat body rolls. A thin piece of wood is mounted to the ceiling where the chain is wrapped on hooks and holds the IV bag. Directly across from the IV bag on the wall is a mirror allowing the viewer to read the text on the IV bag, but in reverse creating a reflection of the viewer — it reads, Sick Daddy. Against the wall and about 3 feet lower on a plinth you see a concrete slab with a trace of a medical glove resting on top of mirror. There is a spot light that is creating a distorted shadow of the concrete piece and the IV bag onto the wall. 

To choose the hurt out of consent and desire is something other than the forced upon, projected, non-consensual pain of chronic pain embodiment. I am proposing that the chronic pain and the four autoimmune conditions I have lived with for decades are forms of non-consensual BDSM, which is strategy of trans crip unfuture. As widely understood, BDSM is a practice of consent. A place to explore agency and power often guising itself psychologically as non-consensual, which is also rooting itself in actual autonomous consent. So this sculpture is about power, pain, and pleasure of the trans crip and sick body. The intersection of kink and abolition examines how kink, often perceived as a deviant or marginalized practice, can be understood as a form of resistance and liberation. By challenging societal norms and expectations around sexuality and pleasure, kink can be seen as a way to subvert power structures and create spaces for autonomy and agency. Emma Sheppard, in, Chronic Pain as Fluid, BDSM as Control (2019), explores how people with chronic pain use BDSM / kink as a way to control or reframe their pain, and how pain and emotional expression around it are managed via BDSM. I am positioning pain as fluid and ambiguous. Pain is not just a constant in the background but its affectivity and intensity shift sometimes drastically. Pain kink can be used to harness a sense of self. Sometimes BDSM and/or pain kink is used to gain some control over how pain is felt, expressed, and shared.