Locked In

Rheumatoid arthritis is a condition where the body turns against itself. Its causes are still uncertain, but one truth is undeniable: my body, which once carried me, begins to betray me. As a former national ice hockey athlete, this betrayal was physical and emotional. I found myself asking, "How can I express the pain of these symptoms, the invisible weight that forced me to quit ice hockey, through a visual metaphor?" In moments of intense physical limitation, I could still hold my hockey sticks, but they no longer served their purpose. That disconnect became the foundation for this installation. The work consists of multiple ice hockey sticks entangled by shoelaces, forming a compressed, immobilized structure. The shoelaces, once symbols of readiness and performance, are now tied in all the wrong places. As if by mistake, they distort and restrict the sticks, making them indistinguishable, useless. This binding visually mirrors the experience of my own joints locking from inflammation, rendering even familiar tools foreign. Interestingly, the process of creating this work also echoed my athletic training: repetitive, rhythmic, almost meditative. But unlike practice drills, the task of binding stick after stick became a metaphor for the slow, frustrating buildup of pain and stiffness. Each shoelace felt like a strand of rheumatoid tissue clinging to a joint: small, persistent, and compounding.