“Corpus: Medical Debt Stage”

2024

mixed media

Gabriel Chalfin-Piney is a Chicago based object maker and organizer. Abolitionist world building, self taught spiritual and artistic practices, and accessible performance enters much of the work they create. They are interested in making by way of olfactory, gustatory, and tactile experiments, prompting audience members to participate as co-creators.

Defined by the welcoming color story taken from disposable dental bibs, Chalfin-Piney’s modular sculpture-set invites from afar with its cooling colors yet produces a painful wince at closer inspection. A densely populated altar offers intimate moments from the artist’s hand and mouth. The work shows the medical world slowly taking over nature through color, with elements of hope shining through. The rock's collected by Chalfin-Piney are part of the artist's personal collection of found gua sha tools, which morphed into stim toys overtimes—lake and ocean gifted, untouched by western medicine. The sculpture acts as a set and first act for a forthcoming performance, revealing two stories—one of dental trauma and the disabling chronic pain created during a series of medical malpractice surgeries— one of physical relief and healing outside of the medical industrial complex: a path that might offer a modicum of relief from a body attacking itself. The performance, created with Chicagoans who have experienced dental trauma and chronic pain, activates research and healing engaged through bodyworking modalities in naprapathy, thai massage, cupping therapy, gyrotonics, moxibustion, gua sha and acupuncture.