Milla Peerutin

Artist Catalogue

Virtual Exhibition

SOFT, PINK AND VIOLENTLY RED

The anaesthetist, Greg, asks me to count back from ten. It’s pointless, and I never get past seven anyway, even though I keep trying. This is my second surgery with Greg, and since he works closely with my doctor and surgeon, David, I will probably see him again in December. He doesn’t endlessly poke me like the other anaesthetists and nurses do. It’s a win, and I’ll take all the wins I can get. It’s April, and ever since last July, I have watched my body try and fail at healing. David tells me there’s a lump of red and yellow they’ll remove, promises a soft and pinky future. Since I’m seeing Greg again in December, soft and pinky will have to wait. Before the world goes black, it’s violently red.

Complex feelings surrounding a body that was never mine- breasts that felt other, breasts that didn’t belong to me. Further complex feelings around a surgery that was supposed to be cosmetic and harmless turning into three following complications caused by a virus that nearly destroyed me. Having to watch your body leak, ooze and bleed- knowing there was nothing to do but wait and trust and heal. How do you repackage yourself after being splayed out like a skinned animal? How do you make yourself feel whole after ten thousand hours of trauma and healing?

When I felt like there was no edge to my body and craved constriction, I plastered over everything that felt vulnerable. Exploring the body as it holds onto trauma through the lens of colour and skin, focusing on the limitations of language and what can and can’t be said. Under scars, blue and red veins gushed over mountains of flesh, bruising sweeping over the skin like an avalanche. The inside (and the pain it felt) was so desperate to make itself known it demanded attention in the early hours of the morning when no one but I could hear it. My skinscape, the expansive timeline of events, was able to chronicle a journey of unpacking and understanding lived and living in trauma, my own trauma.

Healing looks like trying; like trying to integrate yourself back into a reality that looks different to before. It’s trying to locate yourself in the aftermath and failing, then trying, then failing again. It’s questioning what arriving at ‘healed’ will look like and how much longer it will take. Healing is taking action to care, to mend what’s been broken. Healing is mess, back and forth, starting over, trying again. It’s becoming an agent in your own rescue, a dedication to your own survival.