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Writer's pictureCharlie Fitz
Jun 27, 20221 min read

Did you know that I make films?



Dotted around my website are audio-visual artworks and video essays.

I wanted to collect them all in one place.


So here is a list with links of the audio-visual pieces and video essays I have made which are currently public:


Artworks:


Artwork collaborations with Oscar Vinter:


Video essays:

  • Both the video essays I have made which are currently public can be found here

Narratives of Space and Time in Jen Brea's Unrest (2022) &

Resisting the "sick role" through self-portraits with Charlie Fitz (2021) - https://www.sickofbeingpatient.com/audio-visual-essays


I am currently working on more video essays and a music video.


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Writer's pictureCharlie Fitz
Jun 25, 20222 min read

Crip Time Online Artist Studio

During my In Transit online residency earlier in the year, each artist had an online studio which they posted updates and works-in-progress to. As a sick and disabled artists, who works mostly digitally from a bed I find this process really pushed my work forward and gave me a way to track my progress, as well as a space to reflect. I would like to continue this practise in this blog space. Although, I will be doing this whilst trying to adhere to a personal Crip Time, so the posts will be as infrequent as I need them to be. Social Media has sort of served this function for me, but I don't trust it as an archival space.


For now, here is something I posted to social media recently.



I am sick - a statement of self collage I made recently.


I have a rare, genetic, incurable condition. I have multiple comorbid chronic conditions. I am sick and disabled and I will always be sick and disabled.


I have a spine that is not fit for purpose and a body that is always pushed to a point of survival.


My life is worthy, my life is not pitiable, my life is just another type of existence.


Whenever I have a big surgical intervention I come up against the assumptions that after this I will be well rather than the understanding that this is just one more patch up on a body that is failing a bit faster than most. This intervention may save my life and may improve certain symptoms and change my day to day in some positive and some negative ways but it is not a cure.


A family member said to me recently they were struggling with the questions they had been getting about me from well meaning parties who want to know how I am and were sort of expecting this current surgery to make me "well" and they were finding it hard to explain the reality of serious chronic illness to people and explain that this surgery is needed and positive but it will never be the fix/cure all these well-meaningly individuals hope or expect it to be.


I felt really seen by this family member when they expressed this to me, as previously I don't think they understood chronic illness or my existence to this extent, but this comment showed me how much they get it. It was extremely validating.


Also, these comments aren't negative or positive, this is just my reality and I am accepting of that. I get joy and pleasure from life as well as pain and grief. I don't want pity or to be an inspiration. I just want to make art, be in the least amount of pain, eat good food, collaborate with interesting people, spend time with my partner and my dog and get decent healthcare.


I made this artwork as a little reminder that I'm still sick, as long as I breathe I will be sick and that's fine.


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Writer's pictureCharlie Fitz
Oct 12, 20182 min read

Saint Apollonia, reflecting on female icons.

Updated: Dec 7, 2022

Virtual Studio Update


Martyr Me, like Saint Apollonia’.

Self portrait. (Below)

I have a recurring dream that my mouth is full of thick putty. I have something important to say. I dig deep into the putty with my fingers, ripping it away from my teeth. As I tear pieces away the putty grows. As I break it free my teeth shatter in my hands. I hold the pieces in my hands as they turn to pearls.


I created this self portrait after I first saw a depiction of Saint Apollonia in Exeter Cathedral. The Catholic Church has historically viewed women as the property of men and idolized the Virgin Mary or the Virgin Martyrs. To be worthy of being recorded in Catholic history women had to be stripped of their sexuality, their humanity and objectified.


Saint Apollonia

painted on a door at Exeter Cathedral.' (Below)


Saint Apollonia, Patron Saint of Dentistry is venerated by the Roman Catholic Church. As the story goes, she was a Virgin Martyr brutalised in the 3rd century for her religion, she was beaten, all of her teeth broken and burnt alive. Throughout history she has been depicted in a meek pose, holding tongs that clasps a single tooth.


There are over 50 depictions of Saint Apollonia in Roman Catholic churches all across the UK. Andy Warhol depicted her in a series of screen prints in 1984. With his depictions of Hollywood icons, particularly Marilyn Monroe Warhol continued a legacy of turning women into icons and into objects for visual reproduction. Stripping them of their humanity and creating idols to be worshiped. Although Warhol's idols often break with the virgin narrative and are seen instead as sexual objects. But nonetheless his portraits are continuing a legacy of men creating and controlling the narratives of women something I explore in my own work.


As I rip my teeth from my mouth, I am desperate to speak. Freud related dreams about losing teeth to sexual repression. With the legacy of the virgin/whore dichotomy would you be surprised if I was? But I think these dreams are not about sexual repression, I believe they are about needing to be heard and believed. About resisting a culture of silencing. Even when I speak I am not believed, I was not believed by my teachers and now I am not believed by my doctors. But that is a story for another day.

A photo of mine and my brothers baby teeth,

kept in a pot by my mothers bed. (Above)

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