Louise Westerhout
Louise Westerhout(she/they) is a queer, disabled artist based in Cape Town, SA. They are a published poet, therapist, performance artist, curator and educator.
Their work is dedicated to exploration on themes of illness, body consciousness, post-humanism, anti-speciesism, misogyny, trauma, healing and social justice. They hold a BA (Hons) in African Studies from UCT. Their performances have been featured on many South African platforms, including such National Arts Festival, Infecting The City, ICA Live Art Festival, Artsability Festival, Vrystaat Kunstefees and the IntegrArt Festival (Switzerland).
As VIAD’s artist-in-residence for 2024, Louise adopts an emergent methodology through workshops with cancer patients and her own lived experience with Stage 4 Lymphoma in 2008 and 2022-2023 respectively.
Louise's research asks:
- How is ableism expressed in western medicine, how do patients learn to internalise it?
- How are queer disabled bodies understood and treated within the medical system?
- What is the aesthetic and virtuosity of disability?
- If one considers western medicine an extension of patriarchy, to what extent is it misogynistic, ableist, ageist?
- Was my stem cell transplant enough to inoculate myself against this system in which having an older, queer, disabled body strips my immunity to trauma?
- In a world concerned with cure, what would it mean and look like to rather shift our focus to healing?
- How are learned cultural behaviours of toxic positivity and respectability politics internalised by cancer patients/disabled bodies to make them submissive, grateful and non-complaining?
Outcomes from the research will be the production of a series of meditations: a conglomeration of self affirmations, stories and imaginings that reflect rational and realistic ways of understanding suffering. Westerhout will present performances, a blend of live art, storytelling and a performance lecture in order to open dialogue about accessibility, ableism, meritocracy, trauma and queer bodies.