Original Art by Zoe Rose Kriegler-Wenk
Title Just Stay Grounded (2026)
Media Magazine clippings, paper, glue
Caption by Zoe Rose Kriegler-Wenk and Christy Rentmeester
This collage draws on color, proportion, and angled perspective to draw viewers’ attention to how a fragmented figure strives for physical integrity, emotional regulation, and groundedness. Color–especially reds that mark the figure’s head and both feet–and words (“Important The Feet and the Heart”) create a visual narrative, inviting reflection about how we navigate uncomfortable or painful clinical encounters, such as physical examinations, short procedures without anesthetic, or hearing bad news about oneself or a loved one.
So, how should we embodymind?
What happens to our “bodyminds” when we have uncomfortable or painful health experiences is better understood, thanks to the neuroscientist and pharmacologist Candace Pert, whose team innovated our understandings of opiate receptors in some human experiences of pain. Pert also resisted mind/body dualism and modeled–informed by her life as a scientist and later life as a patient–unified use of “body” and “mind” as one word.
Just Stay Grounded invites a viewer to consider, as Pert did, that the language we use to describe our embodied selves can be as forthright as the heartbeat in our chest and both of our feet on solid ground.
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