Nama

“Nama” is the story of my passage through illness and healing, after being diagnosed with lymphoma. The word itself transports me back to its root, lympha, borrowed from the ancient Greek “nymph”. I wander through the convergence of mythology and medicine, with the Greek Naiads -nymphs of rivers, streams, and wells- as companions along life’s hidden currents. Once believed to inhabit sacred springs, they were guardians of waters whose flows were sought for cleansing, healing, and renewal. Lymphoma, a disease of the body’s inner waterways, parallels the Naiads’ realm, therefore becoming the framework for an assemblage of illustration, text, photographs of landscapes believed to have been touched by the nymphs’ presence, self-portraits, ancient sites, recreated ceramic offerings and the stark traces of medical scans, plaiting the clinical with the mythical. In this journey, from diagnosis to treatment, loss to hope, the Naiads, both healers and mourners, accompany me through this unsettling time, becoming guides in a deeper sense of therapy. They remind me that even in profound uncertainty, there is movement of water which carries away, where healing is not an uninterrupted flow, but a confluence of loss and restoration.