Brace Yourself!
Brace Yourself! is an installation that focuses on navigating the space between the deaf community and the hearing world and carving out a space in between. This middle ground becomes a space for the artist Lucia Vera Rosa to play on her own terms, using her body to question who she is becoming. There is space in the middle ground for her to grow into what her body needs. Her emotions will fuel the way. It is all about playing her own way with what is, and what needs to become: using castings of her own body to rupture the constraint of medical devices and to question how they fit in her flesh and bones. She understands the uncomfortable and heavily vulnerable interference of inaccessibility on her body. Coming from vivid memories of hospital visits, the grey textures and sterility of the environment she frequently visited become part of her play; these objects mimic the ‘middle ground’ she is in.
This environment is a space for her to play and create, but it becomes ever so enclosed at times when she is isolated. She recreates movements of pain, grief, and restriction through the use of her own personal medical devices. These devices’ sole purpose is to help her, yet they all play a part in the pain and pressure on her body. Through her movements, she breaks free from these revisited scenes.
Through a perspective of being deaf, Lucia Vera Rosa’s work expresses the constant frustrations faced within an environment not made for her, where her desires fight to thrive in the midst of misunderstanding.
