Lie down. Listen. Immerse yourself. 
 

Iconic Fatigue is a new project by award winning duo disabled artist Ellie Harrison and designer Bethany Wells in collaboration with print designers Hester Simpson and Charlotte Raffo. We interview people with energy limiting conditions about their experiences, then interpret their words through print design to boldly occupy a space in contemporary society that people with chronic illness are often excluded from. These print designs are then made up into bedding sets. Bed linen and audio interviews combine to make an Immersive installation for galleries.

Iconic Fatigue is led by and works with people with lived experience of Chronic Fatigue, Long Covid and other energy limiting conditions. It is underpinned by academic research, and developed in collaboration with Dr. Lucy Prodgers from the School of Medicine at University of Leeds, supported by Leeds Cultural Institute.
 

In 1892 Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell received a horror story called The Yellow Wallpaper about the impact of isolation on people being treated for Chronic illness. It was from former patient Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and it tore to shreds his pioneering approach to treating nervous system conditions. Although the doctor never apologised, he confided in colleagues he had changed his methods because of it: art by patients changing health practices. It is now considered an important work of feminist literature.

Fast forward over a hundred years from 1892 to 1993, and 11 year old Ellie has unexplained symptoms that no one knows what to do with. She aches. She’s tired all the time. Doctors can’t work it out. Is it real? Is she acting? Chronic Fatigue is still referred to as ‘Yuppie Flu’ and common consensus is that it doesn’t exist.
 

Ellie has lived with Chronic Fatigue since the age of 11. When her school didn’t enter her for maths GCSE for fear of hurting their league tables, she was left at home to educate herself. She didn’t have teachers but she did have a load of art and design books: William Morris, Frida Kahlo, Elizabeth Siddal and these voices turning trauma into beauty and valuing slowness spoke to her. In contemporary society the experience of people living with Chronic Fatigue, Long Covid and other often invisible illnesses is not as far away from Gilman’s horror story as we would hope.
 

Gaslighting from doctors, work colleagues, friends and family persists, particularly for women and people with marginalised voices. Campaigns like #MillionsMissing aim to highlight how those living with chronic illness are often missing and isolated from our community and public spaces, with nothing but the 4 walls of their bedrooms for company.
 

“I do not want art for a few;

any more than education for a few;

or freedom for a few.”

(William Morris)