Refusal to Remain Visible
Status: in progress
Hospitalfield Interdisciplinary Residency
August 2026
Line of Inquiry: When Eve Left The Scene
An investigation into leaving the image as an act of choice.
Overview
Refusal to Remain Visible began with a simple shift in the story of Eve: what if she did not simply fall or get expelled, but chose to leave?
Developed during the Hospitalfield Interdisciplinary Residency, the investigation follows leaving as an act of choice and refusal, asking what happens when a body no longer remains within the role, image or frame assigned to it.
What if Eve chose to leave?
Collage Study- Hospitalfield Studio Wall- Aug 2026
Research Nothbook
The notebook is where questions appear before artworks.
Selected pages:
Following the Question
The research began with leaving, but each question opened another. Leaving led to role, role to image, image to frame, and the frame gradually became something more than the edge of an image.
Did Eve leave the role before she left the image?
What does the body encounter when it tries to leave?
Can a decision create a threshold?
Does leaving one frame mean entering another?
The frame started to become something more than the edge of the image, something the body carries, crosses, or perhaps never completely leaves.
Can a body be visible without being framed?
The Research Wall
Throughout the residency, the studio wall became part of the research process. Images, questions, fragments and material experiments were continually added, removed and rearranged as the investigation changed direction.
The process-based instalation on studio wall- Hospitalfield Studio- Aug 2026
Where the Research Led
What remains visible when the body leaves?
The investigation began by asking what happens when a body chooses to leave an image. Towards the end of the residency, the question shifted: what happens to the image, and to the story, after the body has gone?
Collage Study- Aug 2026
Can a body leave an image without leaving a story behind?
Collage Study- Aug 2026
But whose story is it?
Collage Study- Aug 2026
Returning to Eve, this opens another possibility: what if the story of the Fall is not the story of her leaving, but the story that remained after she left?
Collage Study - Aug 2026
This question begins to move the research towards what I am currently thinking of as archives of absence, records in which women become visible through traces, descriptions and narratives produced after they have left. One direction for the next stage of the research will be historical records surrounding runaway wives, and the gap between the woman who left and the woman constructed by the archive after her departure.
Developed during:
Hospitalfield Interdisciplinary Residency
3–16 August 2026
Arbroath, Scotland
Related Investigations
Emerging investigation
Absence, trace, narrative and archive
What happens after it has gone?
Installation proposal
