A live spoken word performance presented as part of The Participatory Clinic at Glasgow Women’s Library (17 May 2025). The work takes the form of an autofictional account of an allergic reaction to an exhibition grounded in lived experience. Drawing on personal histories including childhood medical episodes and experiences within the Catholic Church, the text interweaves bodily hypersensitivity with institutional exclusion.

The script was printed onto the artist’s own NHS Scotland prescription forms. Through this material intervention, the work stages allergy as both physiological condition and metaphor for institutional friction, situating the archive and gallery as sites of exposure, illness and reaction.

Format: Live spoken word performance.
Duration: 20mins
Presented within Shona Macnaughton’s The Participatory Clinic at Glasgow Women’s Library alongside invited artists and contributors.