Megan Bent:
Patient/Belongings

form & concept | October 2022

In Patient / Belongings, Megan Bent presents a selection of photographic meditations from the series I Don’t Want to Paint A Silver Lining Around It, which chronicles the artist’s experiences as a disabled person throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. Vivid reproductions of chlorophyll prints on leaves presented alongside their originals speak to exquisite and fleeting realities of human life.

As much as the content of Megan Bent’s imagery begs us to understand the difficulties of living with a disability, it invests equal time into reframing paradigms of disabilities. In her own understanding of her degenerative illness, the artist has embraced the disability concept of “Crip Time,” which values slowness, care and attention over speed and constant production.

While the world has become accustomed to photography’s sleek, digital edges, Bent’s practice actively rejects this standard in favor of surprising processes that embrace the temporary materiality of the natural world. Patient/Belongings features decaying leaves that hold fleeting records in chlorophyll: as these light-sensitive substrates are exposed to the world, the imagery they hold will inevitably disappear.

To interact with one of these delicate specimens, the viewer lifts up a curtain, peering into the shadow box for as long as they need to with the understanding that their time with this work is finite. Nearby, digital archival pigment prints present documentation of Bent’s original photographic objects, serving as permanent, jewel-toned reminders of the decay of their source material. Patient/Belongings creates space for an intentional embrace of concurrent experiences, those of ability and disability, united under the corporeal impermanence that we share.

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