This piece is in direct conversation with Alison Kafers Feminist, Queer, Crip. In this book she speaks to the nostalgia people with disabilities often feel towards the before times, and our penchant to want to live there. While at first I was defensive of this desire when I tried to conjure an image of a non ill me, the only image I could imagine was a cartoonishly happy one, in which I am skipping through a forest and nothing is wrong.I decided to lean into this image, the only image I could imagine, as I found it as engaging as it was silly. A tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of the non-reality of this alternate reality. I also used an image of myself on my wedding day to depict the alternate Jinian as a way to further emphasize the dissonance within the image, the happiness yet complete disconnect from how my life is now. While it may be true nothing is wrong in the image, everything is perfect and good. I am also alone, and without reference. By placing myself in this alternate reality I’m completely disconnected.This idea of relation is crucial to the way in which I decided I display and abstract Paper Viel. As the eye of a scanner scans the paper, the collage of this alternate me is then split up into sections and sequenced in a GIF. This allows the viewer an opportunity to restore the image back to fullness to peek behind the paper veil themselves.

Paper Veil (2023)
GIF, Paper