Bed Folly for the Chronic Subject
Disabled artist and curator Nadia Lesniarek considers rest
I have chronic pain in my head, neck, and back. I need to lie down regularly, wherever I am. If there is no clean space, I will lie in a dirty space. If there is no bed, I’ll lie on the floor. If there is no safe space, I’ll lie in a public toilet or worse, in an unsafe space. I cannot choose, my body won’t give me the time to choose.
Rest never formed a large part of my life plan, but now it is the glue that holds my life together. Safety and comfort, invitation and joy — these form the departure point of my art practice.
Bed Folly for the Chronic Subject is a reimagined ‘frame’ for an artwork, a structure integrating a space to lie down below, with a canvas stretched above, painted as a dreamscape of reclining friends. It offers a radical invitation for the chronic subject to fully participate in the exhibition experience whilst relieving symptoms of discomfort or pain. I like to feel like resting is a treat if I can. My work, and this piece particularly, asks how can we make the clinical acts of pain relief joyful?
The installation enables a prolonged relationship with the painting. The viewer is made entirely comfortable, invited into a more intimate encounter with the subjects in the painting above them. There is only really space for one person to experience the painting at any one time. You are in solitude and yet you are on show, you become part of the installation.
The figures in the painting recline and float in nudity in a triangular form, touching lightly. They are hidden from view until you lie with and beneath them. Nudity has many second-order meanings: sexuality, vulnerability, freedom. Without clothing, the naked body has no signifier of time, period, or context. They float, and through your comfort, you float with them.
In The Reclining Nude, Emma Wilson writes: "The reclining nude is an image of passivity, of submission, of hedonism. It allows thought about passivity as pleasure, about depression and grief figured posturally, about indolence as a form of resistance and anarchy."
Passivity is defined as ‘acceptance of what happens, without active response or resistance’.
Passivity as pleasure is interesting in that it speaks to the absence of action, of use, of waste. The pleasures of wasted time. The resistance acts in the lack of action. The body on strike.
The act of reclining during the day or in public speaks to a form of active resistance, and is a response to the hostile conditions of contemporary society and public space; it is a spatial anarchy.
The structure opens up conversations about rest, care, pain, fatigue, passivity, resistance, sexuality and vulnerability.
The bed folly is the length of my body, 160cm. It is made from up-cycled timber, with space for dirty-shoed feet to poke out the bottom and sides, then uprights into an upper frame with the canvas stretched and inset facing the body. The height of the bed folly is set to give the passerby a glimpse of the artwork ceiling, but they must lie down to see it fully. They must adjust their body to participate. The piece acts as an interruption in art spaces, bringing rest and time to the forefront.
Nadia Lesniarek is a disabled artist and curator, and my practice revolves around painting, installation, research, and community engagement. Her work focuses on architecture in relation to the body, the senses, joy and radical invitations to the chronic subject.
Nadia Lesniarek’s Bed Folly is the first reflection in the Substack series, ‘On Rest’. Each of the disabled and chronically ill creatives featured receives a remuneration of £50 (made possible by an Edge Fund grant).
If you would like to share your reflections On Rest, please get in touch! If you are financially able, please consider a paid subscription to resting up collective’s Substack to support our work. As ever, thank you for being part of our slow space.
As a chronically ill person who spends so much time in bed, this has honestly inspired me to consider hanging artwork on my ceiling!