The collaborative process was central to the work. An open invitation circulated through networks and word of mouth brought together 11 people affected by endometriosis. During a workshop, participants used porcelain underglazes to translate experiences, memories and reflections onto individual tiles through text, image and mark making. Firing fixed these traces into the porcelain, turning gestures made during the workshop into a lasting material record.

The contributions developed around four themes: Challenge, Resilience, Empowerment and Imagined Future. I did not think of these as stages moving from suffering to recovery. They sit alongside one another, reflecting different and sometimes overlapping experiences of living with illness. In Imagined Future, handwritten statements move beyond personal reflection towards hopes and demands for different medical, social and cultural conditions.

The cabinet also draws on objects associated with private devotion, memory and ritual, including the Portuguese oratório doméstico, the Japanese butsudan and the Tibetan prayer wheel. I was drawn to objects that protect what is intimate or valued, and to the small rituals they invite: looking, opening, turning and returning. These references shaped the cabinet’s enclosure and the rotating drums. Each turn brings different accounts alongside one another, so their relationships keep changing.

The porcelain tiles connect to the narrative tradition of Portuguese azulejos, where tiled surfaces have long carried images, histories and collective memory through domestic, civic and religious spaces. I wanted to bring this narrative quality into the work and use porcelain to hold lived experience. Each participant developed their own visual language, allowing their contribution to remain recognisable within the larger work.

Opening the cabinet reveals an interior lined with engraved brass panels carrying symbols associated with health, justice and bodily autonomy. The reflective gold toned surface draws on the visual language of reliquaries and devotional objects, giving the interior a sense of intimacy and preciousness. I wanted experiences that are often minimised, dismissed or kept private to be given a protected space and treated as worthy of preservation, attention and care.

Four sculpted female faces form the cabinet’s legs. They carry its weight and introduce a repeated bodily presence beneath it. I wanted support to become visible in the object itself, suggesting solidarity, watchfulness and the presence of others.

Concealment and revelation are built into the cabinet. Participants’ stories circulate across its exterior, while the interior remains hidden until someone chooses to open it. I was interested in this relationship between what is shown and what remains protected, particularly in relation to an illness that can profoundly shape everyday life while remaining largely invisible to others.

Chronicles of Resilience does not turn its participants’ experiences into a story of overcoming. It holds pain, resistance, vulnerability, hope and imagined futures without asking them to resolve into one another. The cabinet becomes furniture, archive, vessel and public surface at once: a structure in which individual experiences remain distinct while becoming part of a shared record