Rachael House: Red Hanky Panky Repositioned
A performative reading of my autobiographical comic strips, from my queerzine Red Hanky Panky, with particular focus on two strips; one about depression, one grief. It is often considered insulting to artists to suggest that their work may be “therapeutic”. Yet we are swift to acknowledge that when we cannot make work for one reason or another (e.g. day job, family commitments, lack of space) our mental health suffers. So what happens when mental health issues leave us unable to make sense of the world in our accustomed way, through making? When does it become possible to articulate one’s inability to articulate? The strip relating to my depression is circular. In it, I need to make sense of the depression through drawing/making, but I cannot make or draw because I am dealing with depression. There is a tension between my lack of agency and the tight, scratchy, but controlled drawing. I could not have drawn what I describe when in the initial phases of depression. Following the death of my parents I drew a strip about grief. In this case I had no intention of making work relating to my bereavement, but “my hands know more than I do”. The strip shows that all the work I had been making was loaded with the burden of my loss, but the only people who could witness that – my mother and father – were no longer alive. The strips will be performed as a reading. They are printed panel by panel on large sheets of paper, and as each one is read it is stuck on a wall until the whole strip unfolds. The performativity of this presentation, it’s slowing down of the reading, gives a slightly stumbling awkwardness, fitting the subjects.
