Michael Imossan & Rae White

MY BODY IS A STORM INSIDE A STORM

Self defence has me warring with myself; tucking my belly beneath the

Sly Laughters trailing the slabs of flesh heaped on my bones. My mirror says 

I eat too much. Her words semble that of a man on the bus, though a little bit

Euphemistic. I dab my body in starvation to see how beauty snuggles under the

Pores of a thing wriggling in hunger. I watch as it shrivels into the safety of 

compliments. Today, a sunflower kisses the emptiness  of my belly when a man at the 

Train station called me sexy  and dies. Erosion is the washing away of the flesh by 

Hunger until shoulder  bones protract themselves as tree branches for black birds to perch. 

I have thrown my body into a wind strumming  with the insignia of erosion. I do not care if

I rust —where rust is the eroding of the skin. Last month,  my sister said my body was an 

an onion of storms —a storm inside of a storm. To  defend myself,  I must tame it with 

The ruggedness of not eating and not eating and not eating.

I’ve always loved drawing bodies. They’re so expressive and individual, and exploring how we inhabit our bodies is something I’ve found myself doing more and more over the years as I have been navigating experiences with gender presentation and chronic pain. I like the idea that I can represent people in/as their bodies as something extraordinary, visceral, and almost mythical.

What attracts me to drawing other people, especially live, is that I get to experience someone else, thoroughly inhabiting their body as they’re modelling. And I get to experience that in combination with the bodily experience of drawing with pastels, which are messy and flighty, and with monotype, where you’re pressing and scraping and wiping at ink without any clue of what the final print will look like until you lift it up. I get to physically wrestle with these materials much in the same way that I feel like my mind wrestles with my body when I’m in pain or feeling socially dysphoric, and getting to navigate this mind/body problem when using materials to capture someone else’s body helps me to better navigate it when it’s myself and my own body’s looks and limitations.

- Rae White