When I was doing the original 'Transplant' exhibition, I began thinking about the nature of the transformation experienced by the people I was meeting. They chose to pass through a process that took them close to death, but brought them back again into a new reality.
Alongside the medical and physical elements, there was an experience of suffering and of renewal that seemed to have a spiritual dimension that was seldom recognised or discussed.
Suffering, transformation and renewal is a narrative that we meet elsewhere. In some religious traditions, for example, there is a central story of how an experience of suffering leads to resurrection. In psychological treatment, people often pass through a process that they describe as the death of the old self and the making of a new one.
So in part, this project for me is a way of examining how organ transplantation can lead to the possibility of new life, rather than prolonging or resuscitating an old life. Listening to their stories, it seems to me that people pass through suffering and emerge transformed.
Tim Wainwright