OKAYNOTOKAYOKAY hand-printed fabric stuffed with 21 feet of polyfiber fill with two stacks of inkjet-printed computer paper, 2019.

Site-specific installation, comprised of a 21-foot-long soft sculpture with two stacks of paper, with visitors allowed to take copies with them.

OKAYNOTOKAYOKAY is a representation of my hidden chronic illnesses. 95% of serotonin is produced in the gut and apparently my body doesn’t have enough. For me, this has caused almost a decade of persistent depressive disorder (formerly known as dysthymia) and a lifetime of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). These illnesses feed off each other, each exacerbating the other until I feel as though I cannot take it anymore. I have struggled to come to terms that my life will forever be affected by depression and IBS but I recently reached a point where I feel no need to hide it. I don’t know a life without them, but it is also who I am. I juxtaposed medical and scientific information about serotonin, the gut, and persistent depressive disorder with my own experiences living with it and created a very huggable intestine-shaped sculpture. Depression is complex, exhausting, scary, absurd, intangible, and inexplicable, but it doesn’t have to be isolating.