Hedva Sick Women Theory

In Cree, one does not say, “I am sick.” Instead, one says, “The sickness has come to me.” I love that and want to honor it (Citeswt).
Johanna Hedva is a Korean American contemporary artist whose most famous work is the Sick Women Theory. She got the idea of sick women theory from Audrey Wollen’s “Sad Girl Theory” and Kate Zambreno’s “Heroines.” She tries and gives the sick women the qualities opposite to a heroin because sick women are not considered as heroines. Her idea of sick women theory does not apply particularly to women but according to Hedva,
“The Sick Woman is all of the “dysfunctional,” “dangerous” and “in danger,” “badly behaved,” “crazy,” “incurable,” “traumatized,” “disordered,” “diseased,” “chronic,” “uninsurable,” “wretched,” “undesirable” and altogether “dysfunctional” bodies belonging to women, people of color, poor, ill, neuro-atypical, differently abled, queer, trans, and genderfluid people” (Citeswt). Hedva got the motivation and idea to write sick women theory after she was unable to attend a protest on black lives matter and the saw the protesters through her window. At this point she raises the central question for sick women theory which is “How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of …show more content…
Hedva explores this idea in an interesting way and mentions that people should listen to each other, talk about their sickness, trauma and troubles and care for one another and when no one is well enough to work capitalism will come to its end. The sick women theory can be seen as an anti-capitalist theory due to this. One can argue that this is due to the fact that sick people are not part of the work force nor do they produce anything, the capitalist does not tolerate his/her workers being sick because then mass production does not take place. This concept to combat capitalism is however, very interesting and