Bone Drift

At the confluence of art, medical science, disability theory, and lived experience, I collaborated with artist and researcher Helen Pynor to present Bone Drift, a series of workshops and exhibition, that challenge rigid boundaries—between bodies, materials, and the very idea of what it means to be (dis)abled. This work was presented as part of the program for ISEA2024, one of the most significant international gatherings of artists, researchers, and professionals in experimental and electronic media arts.

Hosted by artisan, Queensland peak body for craft and design, Helen and I explored our evolving (dis)abled identities through the lens of personal experiences of congenital hip dysplasia and total hip replacements. We are, to borrow terminology from Rosi Braidotti, in a constant state of ‘becoming’ in relation to our (dis)abled identities in the world. We used this current moment in time, where we are exploring post-surgical identities, to explore the fluidity of the boundaries of animate-inanimate, organic-material, abled-disabled in collaboration with others.

This collaborative work drew on Helen's work Habitation - where she worked with her own surgically excised bone material to make a bone china object. Navigating the bureaucratic and ethical complexities of medical ownership, Helen secured permission to keep the bone excised from her body, using it to craft a bone china replica of her femur head. Bone china—containing up to 50% animal bone—becomes a site of transformation, its high-temperature firing process leaving behind only the mineral essence of Helen's own bone. The resulting material, strong yet fragile, luminous yet devoid of organic tissue, reflects the paradoxes of bodily change.

Extending this, Bone Drift situates these material conversations within the politics of disability. Disability studies scholar Alison Kafer reimagines disability not as an individual medical issue but as an evolving political and relational experience—one shaped by environmental, social, and cultural forces. Bone Drift foregrounds this shifting landscape of (dis)ability, moving beyond fixed categories to embrace porous, unstable, and chimeric identities. We drew specifically on our experiences of hidden and temporary disability to inform this exploration.

In the Bone Drift workshops, Helen and I took participants through a series of making processes, introducing scientific information and artistic exploration about the materiality of bone, disability theory, and medical science (specifically material science and information on the evolving field of medical devices). Throughout, participants were invited to bring their lived experiences and reflections into dialogue with the making processes and this information. Over three half day workshops they ultimately created a series of personal objects, drawing on bone china technologies, metal artefacts and wax.

This resulting exhibition featured these personal artefacts, which bear traces of the complex relationships between human and non-human materials, life and nonlife, presence and absence. These artefacts form an evolving dialogue—between bodies and materials, the organic and the engineered, and the visible and invisible dimensions of (dis)ability experience, offering a more dynamic view of the interactions between the body and technology.

Placed together with calcined beef bones (the source of the bone ash for bone china making) and prosthetic objects (highlighting this dialogue between natural anatomy and engineered devices), these objects formed an artwork that represented a collective exploration of what it means to live with temporary, hidden and/or orthopaedic disability – now, in the past or into the future.

Bone Drift acknowledges the tensions of visibility and invisibility, disclosure and passing, inherent in hidden disabilities. Just as bone is constantly reshaped by unseen cellular activity—old structures dissolving, new formations emerging—our identities, too, are in perpetual flux. Through material transformation and conceptual inquiry, Bone Drift reveals the intimate exchanges that shape us, both bodily and socially. Whether through the calcified remnants of a femur, the delicate translucency of bone china, or the slow fusion of living cells with an implant, the exhibition reminds us that our bodies are never fixed. They are sites of ongoing negotiation, shaped by forces both internal and external, personal and collective.

Iterations of Bone Drift have been commissioned by Gallery Lane Cove and Creative Studios, Bankstown Arts Centre and Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf. See documentation here.