A need for care: Leila Abrahams in ‘Remedy’

A review by Misha Krynauw on the 3rd of October 2023. This should take you 2 minutes to read.

Everard Read/
06.09 - 06.10.2023

Everard Read/CIRCA recently presented a collection of works from Leila Abrahams and two other process-based artists under the title Remedy. The month-long exhibition invites the audience to experience Abrahams’ visual language of materials and method tied closely to the ritual of her lived experience and relationship to medication. Her use of gel capsules, nails and thread are assembled here in the hopes of developing a new system of symbols to delve into the conversations around her condition, Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, and the notion of ‘invisible ailments.’

Leila Abrahams, A Is for Anxiety, 2023. Courtesy of Everard Read.

A is for Anxiety, holds me before I read its title. With the other works in her first presentation with the gallery, Abrahams has laid the empty vessels of her capsules flat, but here, the artist has challenged the overall dimensions of their accumulating shape to bunch, rise and riddle. Beyond the words which provide perspective to her experience – which can be misconstrued, or are limiting and often harmful – is the detail demanded by her execution. Her design offers an opportunity to sit with and comprehend themes of materiality, effort and mortality as avenues through which to resist for oneself the judgement, ignorance and ableism society has normalised about chronic illnesses.

Each of the five works have their own palette in the colouring of the capsules, with the remaining titled: Tunnel Vision, Finding the Light, Loss of Innocence and Rebirth. The language of health turns passive and distant when you’re met with a chronic illness and have to commit afresh to the idea of ‘survival.’ Each collected capsule feels like a symbol of routine and commitment required by the taking of medication: a need for care, community and free medical services.

In understanding that my perception will not be the same as the next audience member to the show, I am reminded again of the difficulties the artist faces, and why Abrahams offers the physical tablet instead of debating her condition with someone who may demand physical evidence of her suffering to satiate their definition of her reality. There is also fraying at the ends of her works, and the consistency of this element substantiates their symbolism. In Rebirth, the many polyester threads are wound together, their reinforcement adding to their presence, their meaning voiced by the title as they create a textured, emerald frame.

I look forward to Abrahams getting more opportunities to expand on her practice while representing herself, growing her index of symbols and expanding their scale.