Conditional

A hallmark of chronic illness is seeing many doctors who give many diagnoses but still may not fully understand what’s going on with your body. Conditional tries to evoke what it’s like to try to make sense of things that don’t make sense. To create the imagery in the book, I took all the diagnosis codes listed under the “my conditions” section of my Electronic Medical Record (EHR) and scrambled them to create new patterns, which I slowly embroidered on the pages. My intention is for viewers to “read” the book and try to find patterns and make guesses as to what the numbers mean, but not be sure their interpretation is correct. This gets at what it can feel like to try to keep track and make meaning of things that never seem to have enough clarity when dealing with chronic health conditions.