Side Effect #1 (2021)

“Side Effect #1”, 3 Channel video and sound, 2021
 

I used to love books, reading them, getting lost in them or collecting them. Even looking at their titles on a bookshelf was soothing.

Then I got sick. Activities started to disappear from my life, one by one, like leaves falling from trees in a cold November afternoon.

Before I knew it, reading the back cover of a book transformed into reading medication instructions, wondering about the side effects.

When I got sick, I was disbelieved, misdiagnosed and discriminated for nearly 10 years by medical staff as an immigrant woman.

As a matter of fact, modern medicine is a field to consider while talking about inequalities. It seems rooted in misogyny and attitude towards women is often biased.

 Ironically, some of the ancient thoughts about women’s conditions might have persisted to this day. Plato thought that the uterus was an independent animal which wilfully wandered the woman’s body and caused disease! Women are often doubted in patriarchal modern medicine.

An undiagnosed and yet ill person won’t get any help from anywhere. Spending tons of money on medication, supplements, alternative medicine and fighting to figure out what’s wrong, seems to be the only solution to survive.

Surviving is now my way of life, as if I was living on a different planet in a parallel dimension. I cross off my days of survival, one by one, from the timeline of that universe.

On my fluid and ephemeral planet, pills have replaced books, ingredients, serving sizes and side effects are my new stories.