Integrate[d]: Her final two weeks, 2013
Series of 5 digital photographs
70 x 81.3 cm (24 x 32”)
This series of photographs constitute the objects remaining from performances where I reenacted the cooking and preparation of food I fed my mother during her home-based palliative care in the weeks prior to her death in 2011. One of the days I baked chocolate chip cookies, which were her favourite. She said the smell “filled the house with splendour.” She was able to take one chipit into her mouth and let it melt on her tongue. In the final stages of colon cancer that spread to her liver, lungs and ultimately to her brain, my mother transitioned from being able to eat custard, apple sauce, EnsureÒ, and, in the last two days of her life, just spoonfulls of water poured into her mouth. This is part of a series of works, Integrate[d], in which I explore how life experiences are taken into the body and mind, becoming part of our physical and emotional processes.
