Mourning lost parts: An art-based response to experiences in/of a neurorehabilitation day service

This visual essay honours the importance of creative practice as a way of staying in touch with the affective dimensions of human situations and experience. Drawing on observations, field notes and documentation of artistic practice from her doctoral research, the author engages in a reflexive conversation with an emergent ‘body’ of artwork made in response to observations and experiences in and of a neurorehabilitation day service. Broadening the scope of response art to the performative nature of ‘making’, the work of art amplifies the resonance of emotional and sensory affect. This brings an ethics of care to the fore, giving voice to aspects of organizational culture (internal and external) that might easily be lost, and emphasizing the need for time and space to mourn.