An "Open Mesh of Possibilities": Thinking Queerness with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Archive
COME AS YOU ARE
In 1996, Sedgwick’s cancer was found to have recurred and metastasized to her spine. The initial treatment mostly eliminated the cancer and slowed its progression. However, the diagnosis was terminal and profoundly affected her. Facing a fatal prognosis, Sedgwick turned to different strands of Buddhist thought and artistic crafts. For Sedgwick, Buddhism offered an alternative way to think about death, one in which it was neither an absolute absence nor the opposite of life. The role that texture plays in Sedgwick’s artwork is intimately connected to her thinking on affect and mortality.
“Death.” Circa 1990s.
Sedgwick includes this poem in her unpublished talk “Come As You Are,” in which she describes why she turns to Buddhist thought and textiles after her cancer recurred and metastasized.
Untitled cyanotype print on fabric depicting a statue of the bodhisattva Kuan-Yin; accompanied by the text of a Kyutaro quote (dated 1928) and white and grey fabric. Circa 2002.
This textile piece was displayed in Sedgwick’s 2002 exhibition Boddhisattva Fractal World at Johns Hopkins University. In her artist statement, Sedgwick explains that her textile show “explores the contemplative space generated by the thousand-year-old sculptural images of Kuan-Yin, the bodhisattva of compassion in Chinese Buddhism.” As the gender portrayal of Kuan-Yin had changed over the centuries, Sedgwick described how her “own thought and hope is that, even in the expression of a strong sensuality, many of these regal and loved divinities may not have been shaped or perceived through the eyes of gender at all.”
Medical brace with polymer clay decorations. Circa 1990s.
Sedgwick’s spine had been extremely weakened by the cancer’s recurrence. She wore this brace, which she decorated with polymer clay figures, to stabilize her spine while receiving treatment.
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