After suffering years of anxiety around dental work, I started to create art about my teeth and dental experiences — including this series of photos and a zine detailing my TMJ issues — to help gain a feeling of agency around something I felt little control over. I staged a self-portrait of myself as St. Apollonia, the patron saint of dentistry, as she is depicted in Medieval and Renaissance art. While I share a version of a name with the saint, she is not my namesake, nor am I Catholic. However, I feel an affinity with this woman whose martyrdom was having her teeth pulled out. For the Feast Day of St. Apollonia, which falls on February 9, I created a "feast" of soft and beautiful foods in honor of this saint, composed and photographed to look like a Renaissance still life. This series then extended to include photos of my son Dash who, at age ten, was losing another round of baby teeth at the same time that I was replacing broken fillings from prior dental work.
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