Chelsea LEEDS Art

Artist Statement by art therapist and artist Chelsea Leeds

“Your task in life to survive love and loss” -Michel de Montaigne

I am sitting here looking at this body of work, carefully assembled together in the room intended for a future baby. Why do we call it a body of work? Sometimes referred to as a Corpus (Latin for Body) or an Oeuvre (French for work). Apparently, Oeuvre comes from the Latin Opera meaning attention, activity, effort, work. The root -op means to produce in abundance (like in copious, opulence, optimism).

Attention, activity, effort, work. Navigating trying to conceive and infertility is to be in constant awareness of one’s body. I have put in so much attention, activity, effort, and work involving my body over the last three years. And I have produced in abundance. Just not in the way that I have wanted. An abundance of hope, fear, gratitude, doubt, anger, jealousy, anxiety, joy, grief, and love. I have learned to listen to and make space for my emotions. Particularly grief. And her sisters: despair and sadness. To have a body is to experience loss and grief. In the last four years I have lost and reformed my relationship with my body multiple times. I have lost and recalibrated hopes and plans for the future. I have lost “should’s”, and “supposed to’s”, and any semblance of timelines. I have lost the illusion of control and ease. I have lost versions of myself and was thrust into new ones.

I made art because sometimes I lost my words. Or at least the words were hard to string together into sentences and allow them to leave my mouth. So I created. I created when I found out I needed surgery in order to safely get pregnant. I created when we started trying to conceive and I was hopeful but cautious. I created all the times it became clear this was not going to be “easy”. I created when I felt all those emotions listed above. I created after we lost our two babies. I created each time we dove back into the unknown. I created as we grappled with whether or not to continue trying. And I created once we decided we were not going to have our own children.

This body [of work] includes themes of anxiety and control, hope, waiting, identity and being in a body, doubt, the invisibility of infertility and miscarriage, and intersecting grief. Along with artwork I have included small bits of journaling, poems, and pieces of books I have read. Thank you for witnessing the most tender and vulnerable parts of me I have put out into the world.