Artist show to explore ‘Body of Work’
Published 1:30 am Tuesday, March 3, 2026
A life-size body with wings stretching from its fragile paper skin, glows from the inside, pieced together from MRIs, ultrasounds and medical records. For Whidbey artist res plumata, the work is not metaphor — it is about their own survival.
Plumata is showing “Body of Work” at the Koneksi Co-Creative Gallery in Clinton, a show plumata describes as a conversation around the impact of chronic illness, invisible disability and medical trauma, and how it affects the mind, body and spirit. The exhibit runs March 4 through March 30.
The artist said they use the all-lowercase moniker “res plumata” for safety purposes. The artist uses they and them pronouns.
Already living with a chronic illness, a few months after their work was accepted into the gallery, plumata’s life changed. In October, they were in a “freak accident,” plumata said, and suffered a traumatic brain injury that left them permanently disabled. Their close-up vision became impaired and their mobility was weakened. But really, all that mattered to plumata was that they could keep doing art.
“The very first thing that I did when I got home from the hospital was, I need to know that I can still make art. And so my partner set me up, Frida-Kahlo-style on the couch with all of my things and I created a series that I’m calling the concussion series,” plumata said.
Working across acrylic painting, pen and ink illustration, three-dimensional papier-mâché, plaster sculpture and audiovisual multimedia, plumata began creating free-flow pieces to reorient themselves in a changed body.
Exasperation became a part of the process in making the artwork.
“There’s a lot of times where I’ll be working and my hands are just not doing what they’re supposed to. My eyes aren’t doing what they’re supposed to. And so I have to stop, but then that’s also part of the art, that frustration,” plumata said.
The concussion series includes a watercolor of the distorted, fish-eye image they saw upon regaining consciousness, and a pen-and-ink rendering of the actual site months later. But the show’s centerpiece, a winged papier-mâché lamp molded from printed medical imagery, represents rebuilding. As they constructed it, plumata said, they also learned to support their own body’s weight again and fill it with light.
“It just made sense to have a show talking about that experience. Not as something that I have come out of and I’m reflected on, but as I’m living in it.”
Each of the approximately 10 to 15 pieces will be paired with a poem; visitors can purchase prints with the accompanying text.
There will be a reception from 6-9 p.m. at the art gallery, located at 4777 Commercial St., suite A-9, on March 7, featuring snacks and live music.
Learn more about res plumata at res-plumata.com, or follow them on Instagram.
