I keep thinking about how easily history can celebrate one person and forget the people who paid the price for what they achieved. Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey were enslaved women who endured experimental surgeries at the hands of J. Marion Sims. Their pain became part of the history of modern gynaecology, but for so long, the story was mostly about him. I imagined what it must have meant to be in that room, to be afraid, to be hurting, and to have the other women there with you. So I made them hold each other. I made them beautiful and regal even with the blood and torn clothes because I didn’t want their suffering to be the only thing we saw. We talk about what was discovered, what changed medicine, who became important, but sometimes we don’t reflect on what it cost or who had to carry that cost with their bodies. They had names. Anarcha. Lucy. Betsey. Behind the Artist’s Mind Lately I’ve been doing a deep dive into African history, the slave trade and the histories that came after it. And honestly, the more I read, the more I realise how much I don’t know. There are stories I had heard briefly before, names I had come across without really knowing who they were, and other histories I’m only discovering now. I keep finding myself going down these rabbit holes and sitting with certain stories for days. Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey were one of those stories. Learning about the role enslaved Black women played in the history of modern gynaecology stayed with me. We know the names of the men history decided were important, but so often the people whose bodies, pain and lives made those achievements possible become a sentence somewhere in the background. I kept wondering what it was like for the women themselves. Not just what was done to them, but how they survived those rooms. Whether they spoke to each other. Whether they held each other. Whether one woman tried to comfort another knowing exactly what she was about to go through. That became an important part of the work for me. I didn’t want to portray them as helpless bodies on an operating table. Even with the blood and torn clothing, I wanted them to feel beautiful, regal and present. Sims is there, but he isn’t who I want you to look at. And this piece is only one part of what I’ve been exploring. I’ve been reading, researching and creating around different moments in African and Black history, particularly around slavery and what came after it. Some of what I’m finding is difficult to sit with, but I want to keep looking. I want to understand these stories beyond the few paragraphs we are usually given and then interpret what stays with me through my own visual language. There is more coming from this exploration. This is just one of them. And because I’ve been thinking about how these works can exist beyond a still image, I’ve also created an animated version of this piece. The collector of the 1/1 will receive the animation alongside the original work. I’m still deep in the rabbit hole. More soon.