how do i make you believe, 2026
how do i make you believe refers to the question that I have been asking medical professionals, friends, family, and colleagues while navigating chronic illness. The textile-based works presented in this exhibition speaks of how chronically ill bodies navigate pain, illness, panic, doubt, and exhaustion to appear functional within global systems of productivity. Engaging with my personal chronic illness, I use embroidery as a feminist and disability-affirming action, creating spaces for reflection.
I choose embroidery as a medium and method, as it holds the capacity to wait for me. For example, I can work on a piece today and, if I feel unwell in the coming days, return to it later. Even after a year, the thread is still there, the needle ready to be picked up where it was last pricked. In using this slow, repetitive, unhurried medium, I am not punished for needing rest.
Chronic illness is a systematic issue, yet it is treated as an individual failure to be productive or a hyper-personal misfortune. Feeling of guilt over needing care, isolation stemming from cancelled plans, shame and invisibility, and the exhaustion of justifying paint to medical professionals, family and society shape chronically ill bodies into sites of internal conflict, visible performance and hidden labour. By tying worth to output, the so called unproductive bodies are devalued, penalized and erased. the slow, repetitive, unhurried action of fine embroidery counter this erasure.
works in this exhibition reckon with quiet, politically charged interruptions to the logic of efficiency. Each work marks a distinct set of locations and timelines. I embroidered while in bed, on the bus, at the beach, and anywhere I found myself in moments of energy. Every work in the exhibition carries the unpredictable reality of a body that is never the same the next day
The exhibition takes place in an environment of disability-affirming language, crip-time awareness, and increasing openness to share symptoms, recognize patterns of performed functionality, and find a community living through chronic illness across geographies.
how do i make you believe, flags off Anupa Mehta Contemporary Art's Emerging Artists Solos calendar for 2026 selected by Anupa Mehta, Veerangana Solanki and Shaleen Wadhwana