Artist Statement

When I was thirteen years old, my doctor put me in a neck brace and said it would not last long. Eleven years later, I am still navigating extreme oscillations of health while feeling stigmatized and misunderstood. I was diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS) on 11/11/11. Although Ankylosing Spondylitis is a common disease, it remains unseen and unknown by both the public and medical practitioners. My art is how I make my story visible.

My paintings employ layers of text and image to capture the multifaceted identities we have as patients. Patients living with chronic, incurable diseases rarely fit into healthy-sick binaries. With illnesses often invisible and oscillating in symptoms and magnitude, patients find themselves in limbo, betwixt and between sick and healthy. By creating a third box, an “other,” I aim to make this complex identity visible.

In my photography, I show the intersection between the finite and the infinite nature of chronic disease. These body scans are dissected into disconnected body parts: my brain, my spine, my heart, my vertebra. As a patient, I have often felt that my body parts are seen as fragments to be analyzed in separate glass boxes. However, in sum, my boxes represent the connections between my body and mind.

Biography 

Sal Marx is a multimedia artist who works to illuminate human experiences with chronic disease and advocate for patient-centered change. Living with Ankylosing Spondylitis, an invisible, underrepresented disease, she uses her personal story as a visual data point in the context of a much broader healthcare crisis. Marx studied Public Policy, Psychology, and Media Studies at Pomona College. She is based in Brooklyn, NY.