Endurance Tests (2019-2020)

is a diptych that includes a video, Enduring Distorted Space (2019) and an image Endurance Report (2020).

Exhibited in That’s So Gay: Eleventeen, curated by syrus Marcus Ware, Virtual exhibition, Winter 2021

I was diagnosed with ADHD and learning disabilities in the final weeks of high school. As such, I went through public education without any additional support, while enduring constant criticism for my lack of effort and continued academic weakness. In my final years of high school, I discovered that it would take exactly one minute to slowly write “one more minute left in class” in opposite directions using both hands. And so, for each minute of class I would write a line, until the class was finally over. 

​Enduring Distorted Space (2019) recreates this ritual, while Endurance Report (2020) is a chronological compilation of report card feedback I received from grade 1 to 12. 

In the chapter “Along Disabled Lines: Claiming spatial agency through installation art” (2016) Amanda Cachia explores the work of geographer B.J. Gleeson and the concept of “enduring distorted space”. She explains through Gleeson that due to inaccessibility, which "‘exacerbates the distorting effect of disability’ (Gleeson 1996:389) - Disabled people must therefor inhabit and endure distorted space, which is the social space of the ostensibly “normal” person” (Cachia 2016:242).

Enduring Distorted Space, 2019