As a disabled, chronically ill person, the white plastic hospital bag is routine, a simple, ubiquitous object symbolic of accessing my medical care needs. Inside, the uniform of everyday life is held precious as the material stretches and conforms to create a flimsy divide between patient and person. Rendered from a 3D scan of a ‘Patient Belongings’ bag tenderly filled with personal effects from a surgery just days before lockdown, good things come to those who wait (or so I’ve been told) explores the yearning for access and care in a time that feels so careless. As sick and disabled communities are faced with profound isolation, lack of access to regular medical care, and exclusion from public life, this work asks what will we carry with us when we emerge from this collective trauma, and how will we recover?

Chelsey Campbell (she/they) is a disabled white settler-Canadian artist and graduate researcher at the University of Alberta in amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton). Working through the lens of critical disability theory and care ethics, Campbell's research practice explores the tenuous nature of their queer-crip body in social and institutional frameworks fixated on diagnosis and cure. Through a combination of printmaking, 3D modelling, installation, and photography, their work seeks to make space for the body in pain, celebrate disabled narratives as complex and whole, and extend radical care for community through artistic practice.