Points of Contact—Hannah Leighton-Boyce by Amie Kirby

‘But we who occupy the bodies of crip time know that we are never linear…’ – Ellen Samuels, Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time (2017)

‘In sleep, I dreamed of vigorous motion’ – Laura Hillenbrand, A Sudden Illness(2003)

I first met Hannah Leighton-Boyce when she had just returned from a residency with the Hugo Burge Foundation in the grounds of Marchmont Estate, Scotland. Like myself, Hannah identifies with the label of ‘disabled’ or ‘chronically ill’, having lived with an autoimmune condition since a teenager. As a result, much of our first meeting, which took place over Zoom in April 2024, ebbed and flowed between ideas of disability, embodiment, process and productivity. As a Type 1 Diabetic, my journey with and relationship to chronic illness has been neither smooth nor linear, and seems to be increasingly complicated as the years progress. In 2021, I contracted Pneumonia and in the following two years I suffered several Covid-19 infections. My energy has been markedly lower since, and every day I remind myself that my idea of productivity simply isn’t what it used to be. 

This reminder, though alienating at first, spurred me towards a turning point in my practice as both a creative and a community organiser. In 2022, I founded the Crip Culture Collective, a support group for chronically ill, disabled, and neurodivergent creatives and art lovers. Part meet-up group, part advice forum, the collective serves to bring together crips in Manchester who connect to the words ‘creativity’ and ‘disability’ in a myriad of ways. Its formation shows that now more than ever, crip solidarity is a lifeline. Especially in the arts. 

It was clear that mine and Hannah’s shared crip experiences were going to be a recurring theme: my disability announced itself rather rudely as my CGM sensor alarm blared within the first five minutes of our discussion. Whilst I was initially embarrassed, Hannah sympathised, asking questions about my Diabetes, how I was feeling and even whether certain conversations can impact my health. In this moment I knew I’d found a kindred spirit, and over the course of an hour and a half – which I had to bring to a close, ironically, to get to an appointment – we discussed how disability impacts not just our respective art practices but ourselves as people. Because, after all, they are not separable things. Their edges blur into one another.

For Hannah, her practice is a way to reconcile these edges and at once connect with her own physicality whilst disconnecting from her socialisation as a ‘sick person’: making her art practice embodied, processual, and imbued with the (re)negotiation of things in space and time. These relationships between physicality, art process, art product, and mental state called to mind the term ‘bodymind’, which Micha Frazer-Carroll uses in Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health (Pluto Press, 2023) to elucidate the inseparability of physical and mental health. 

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To read the full article on Corridor8, click here. 

This article was commissioned in Spring 2024 as part of a partnership with Corridor8, a not-for-profit platform for contemporary visual arts and writing in the North of England.