Anorexia Nervosa

Trigger Warning: eating disorder (anorexia nervosa), mental illness, hospitalization, childhood trauma, nutrition labels, medical drawing of the body, effects of anorexia, use of the word "fat", restrictive eating, weight loss (in lbs).

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Anorexia Nervosa: A Medical Dossier is a graphic novel in the form of a medical dossier, containing 24 pages exploring my experiences being hospitalized for anorexia nervosa in 2015. As a medical file, the audience is invited to flip through the pages, rearrange the order, and read the narrative in their way of choosing. The contrasting registers also speak to the shift between adolescence and adulthood, through the blend of journal/diary and the medical discourses that we internalize over time. The installation views of the work extend the organizational principles and layering within each page up to the level of the object, inviting exploration of the tactile dimension more directly, allowing a measure of freedom from the routines described in, and by, the individual documents. 

Through a confessional and autobiographical tone, the style of my works is very analytic, diagrammatical, and organized, reflecting on obsessive compulsiveness and the clinical setting of a hospital setting. My work is also inspired by Craig Thompson’s Blankets (2003), Julie Delporte’s This Woman’s Work (2017), and Chris Ware’s Building Stories (2012), Phoebe Gloeckner’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2002) and her work in medical illustration, and Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted (1993).

My work explores themes of eating disorders, anxiety, depression, isolation, coming of age, growth, and transformation, in hopes of normalizing the discourse of eating disorders, explore the unglamorous side of eating disorders (hair loss, intolerance to the cold, loss of bone density, and muscle weakness) and help others feel less alone and heard.