Showing results by narrator "Johanna Hedva" in All Categories

In the wake of the 2014 Ferguson riots, and sick with a chronic condition that rendered them housebound, Johanna Hedva turned to the page to ask: How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed? It was not long before this essay, “Sick Woman Theory”, became a seminal work on disability, because in reframing illness as not just a biological experience but a social one, Hedva argues that under capitalism—a system that limits our worth to the productivity of our bodies—we must reach for the revolutionary act of caring for ourselves and others.

At a party in Los Angeles, a queer Korean American painter spots a woman who instantly controls the room: gorgeous and distant and utterly white, the center of everyone's attention. She wants Hanne, or wants to be her, or to sully her, or destroy her, or consume her, or some confusion of all the above. She will use art to get closer to Hanne, beginning a series of paintings with her new muse as model. When the paintings of Hanne become a hit, resulting in the artist's first sold-out show, she resolves to bring her new muse with her to Berlin, to continue their work, and her seduction.