[The King II] Holding a Heart

..in Artifice -Abbas Zahedi

Nottingham Contemporary

..en route via train and tram to meet Sue at QMC to see TK.

The King & I
This visit I found more upsetting as although he's less critical (passed urine and a stool and as more energy, the sight of him returning  distressed from another spinal dose of chemo, then walking for a wee helped by both parents with intravenous lines gantry in tow, having to be carried back by his mum forms an upsetting image in my mind of his struggles. As if his dad being in prison for a year wasn't enough. 

I was pleased to be able to let some of emotions out, crying tonight as I tend to bottle things up internally. Aggressive loud punkish music played as an outlet for my pain and anger - the albums below (swearing in parts):

The Cravats – In Toytown – Still
 
WARNING MUCH SWEARING in Mother track below

Idles – Brutalism – Mother
 
Schlagenheim (2019 Mercury Music Prize nominee)

Black Midi – Schlagenheim - Bmbmbm
 

EDIT
Yesterday (Thursday) he was allowed his first food and drink for 12 days - seems to have gone ok as he had a bowl of rice crispies (I think) with lots of milk, then spaghetti bolognese (I think) later. Another big milestone.

Exhibition - Holding a Heart in Artifice

A link between illnesss/pain, medicine and art.

The artist Abbas Zahedi works with people and places to help process difficult emotions and histories. Initially trained as a medic, Zahedi diverted his energies towards making art following a close bereavement.

In this exhibition, he considers the parallels between the aesthetics of medical environments and contemporary art spaces - namely, the white sterility of both that he associates with sickness, dying and death. 

Around the perimeter of the gallery Zahedi has positioned a number of steel buttresses which conceptually function in a similar way to cardiac stents, which hold arteries open allowing blood to flow around the body. 

I enjoyed the white noise style sound work which I interpreted as the sound of blood and fluids moving around a body. It was started by pressing the modified  green "PRESS TO EXIT" button. 

It included loaned Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) equipment which uses an artificial heart-lung machine to oxygenate a patient's blood outside of their body. Whilst receiving this treatment the patient is in an in-between state, neither dead nor alive. In this exhibition, the machinery quietly hums, pumping moisture gathered from the gallery atmosphere through its system.

"Hung high from the gallery ceiling, a bronze cast of a work Zahedi made in 2017 for the Diaspora Pavilion at the Venice Biennial acts as a form of insurance." I guess that alludes to some form of escape?