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About
©2025 Roo Dhissou and Jalebi Press. Please ask for permission when referencing my writing because it may contain original references to my PhD, or using my images as they may belong to one of my many photographer friends.
Rest is a room I built in my mind, Roo Dhissou, 2025
‘A Sickness is Spreading, it’s Turning Us Blue’
Residency Activation at Stryx
Opening on July 4th at Stryx for Digbeth First Friday, this is not an exhibition — it is a reclamation.
The gallery is being transformed into a space for rest, refusal, and recovery. Not symbolically — physically. Titled after a Gurdas Mann song mourning community and calling us to stay alert, ‘A Sickness is Spreading, it’s Turning Us Blue’confronts artist burnout and chronic exhaustion as structural issues.
On opening night, the gallery will be activated as a space of resistance — the text “A Sickness is Spreading…” will be read aloud, not as performance, but as declaration. This is a taking back of space in a time when rest is rarely afforded, and exhibitions are increasingly out of reach.
The installation — built from HS2-rescued clay, wood, hemp, and developed with the support of Intervention Architecture — reimagines how we might house care, grief, and creative process. It centres making as survival, and space as sanctuary.
"Across July, I’ll be working on-site at Stryx, developing this living structure as the first iteration of a body of work that will continue into a show at the V&A later this year. Visitors are invited to encounter the work in progress — to sit, listen, and reflect on what it means to build while unwell, to rest while resisting."
This is not a show. This is the work.
Opening on July 4th at Stryx for Digbeth First Friday, this is not an exhibition — it is a reclamation.
The gallery is being transformed into a space for rest, refusal, and recovery. Not symbolically — physically. Titled after a Gurdas Mann song mourning community and calling us to stay alert, ‘A Sickness is Spreading, it’s Turning Us Blue’confronts artist burnout and chronic exhaustion as structural issues.
On opening night, the gallery will be activated as a space of resistance — the text “A Sickness is Spreading…” will be read aloud, not as performance, but as declaration. This is a taking back of space in a time when rest is rarely afforded, and exhibitions are increasingly out of reach.
The installation — built from HS2-rescued clay, wood, hemp, and developed with the support of Intervention Architecture — reimagines how we might house care, grief, and creative process. It centres making as survival, and space as sanctuary.
"Across July, I’ll be working on-site at Stryx, developing this living structure as the first iteration of a body of work that will continue into a show at the V&A later this year. Visitors are invited to encounter the work in progress — to sit, listen, and reflect on what it means to build while unwell, to rest while resisting."
This is not a show. This is the work.
Digital Render by Harrison Dunn, 2025.