Breast Cancer Art Project
"Suspended Self: The Liminal Space of Breast Cancer"
Artist Statement
I have always known cancer. My mother, Molly, had metastatic breast cancer for eight years before her passing in 2005. I have a high risk and genetic predisposition that significantly raises my chances of developing breast cancer. To date, I have had four mastectomy surgeries, ten MRI’s, ten 3d mammograms, and fifteen years of suspecting a gene. I have a lifetime of tests, procedures, waiting, and surgeries to come.
I do know that I am not alone. 1 in 8 women will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of her lifetime. On average, that is one woman every 2 minutes. Awareness and advocacy has helped, but these numbers are staggering. What we don’t see in these numbers are the stories involved. The care, the feelings, the day to day. We do not see how it changes people’s lives.
Observing and listening to people over these years, I’ve heard the same thing echoed over and over: "Am I alone?" "I just need someone to say they get this..." It seems that in a culture that prefers stories to be inspirational and sanitized, we neglect to display the stories of rising and falling in between. As an artist, I wanted to respond to this need.
This yearlong study will highlight the experiences of breast cancer patients, survivors, and those with a high risk or genetic predisposition for breast cancer. I will be conducting interviews with these people, hosting art workshops and support groups with them, building a series of art pieces that reflect these experiences, and hosting an art exhibition that is the culmination of the year.
Often described as a journey, cancer and living with the possibility of cancer changes your perspective on life. It's a deeply personal and vulnerable experience, and it can be isolating in its depths. The mission of this project is to provide a visual articulation to the breast cancer experience, to connect and support those affected by breast cancer, and provide further awareness, advocacy, and understanding to this process.
Exhibition Statement
“Suspended Self: the Liminal Space of Breast Cancer” honors the in-between, the liminal space that is created in a life affected by breast cancer. A body of work to invoke emotion, connection, and serve as advocacy work, this exhibition is a visual articulation of the breast cancer experience. Hundreds of their voices inform the work as “previvors,” or people who have a high family risk or gene that increases their risk of breast cancer, current cancer patients, and breast cancer survivors are both the voices and guidepost for this project.
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Through collected stories, workshops, and interviews, and the “artifacts” of the breast cancer experience - MRI scans, hospital tags, various types of waiting gowns, I am developing 2d and interactive art pieces. The audience participation is crucial to the work itself, as the mission of the project is to facilitate a space for honest, open dialogue and hold space for this experience. Participants of the exhibition can pick up and try on pieces, they can sit down at a desk and put on headphones to listen to and watch a short film, walk in and around other work, or use a rewired vintage telephone to hear messages from real patients. All of this work is placed in and around a living room center that is curated for comfort, support, and connection.
Community programming events accompany the exhibition - a panel discussion with leading experts on breast cancer and previvor work, art workshops to process the feelings observed, and a support group to process the feelings experienced within the exhibition space.
Project Progress
Workshops Held: 7
Pieces Created: 10
Online Interviews: 1500
Community Partners: 16
In-Person Interviews: 11
People Supported: 2650
Below is the map that features all of the participating cities in this project. Updated bimonthly.
Drawings Based on Digital Histiopathology Images
"Triple Negative Breast Cancer Cells"
Ink, Pencil, Archival Paper
2' x 3'
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Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) accounts for about 10-15% of all breast cancers. The term triple-negative breast cancer refers to the fact that the cancer cells don’t have estrogen or progesterone receptors and also don’t make too much of the protein called HER2. (The cells test "negative" on all 3 tests.) These cancers tend to be more common in women younger than age 40, who are African-American, or who have a BRCA1 mutation.
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Triple-negative breast cancer differs from other types of invasive breast cancer in that they grow and spread faster, have limited treatment options, and a worse prognosis (outcome).
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Drawing based on a digital histopathology image of triple negative breast cancer. The staining of the histiochemical with the breast cancer cells gives a pink, red, or purple color.
"Scars" (series of three)
Archival Watercolor Paper
Watercolor Paint
Embroidery Floss
2' x 3' with all three, this work spans nine feet
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This piece bleeds. It is uncomfortable. Layering stripes of watercolor in gray, black, pink, red, and later purple. It represents the emotional and physical wounds and scars of breast cancer. The bruising, the healing, the grief, and the pain.
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This work is 30 layers of watercolor paint, dripped down, and interwoven together. I asked breast cancer patients to share images of their recovery photos and am stitching their scars into the next two pieces. This piece, below, is of my scars in various stages of healing. I took many photos of my healing and could see the lines of my body changed. Deep reds, and blacks, and rose-colored, pinks, and white, scars and healing comes in many shades.
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The work that will come next will be representations of people's stories, experiences, physical and emotional scars. The lines stitched and sewn in are exact lines from women all over the country. The lines are true. The lines share their stories and the lines share mine.
"Postcards" (ongoing series)
Archival Paper
4" x 5" each, 50 different images, 200 postcards printed in total.
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Let us consider cancer like a land. Just like any move to a new land, there is a new language to learn, new people to meet, new landscapes to explore.
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The purpose of a postcard is to send a message and a picture from where you are, to someone else. Cancer patients are in this land, and try as they might, family and friends and well-wishers can't understand completely. A postcard is to say "I'm here. This is what my world looks like. This is how I'm doing."
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In the interviews, I asked people many questions, including "If your gene or cancer was an object, what would it be?" The answers informed this work, as I would photograph the real objects very close, abstracting them. Objects appear like landscapes - postcard places of where they are. Their descriptions are written on the back, to share the place and the feeling.
This postcard piece is “exhibited” or shared on two postcard stands, similar to ones seen in souvenir shops. These stands are filled with postcards. Gallery participants are invited to pick up, read and engage with, the postcards, and even take them home if they wish.
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Answers have included:
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"I see my cancer as a gelatinous blob."
"My cancer is a time bomb."
"It would be a gloomy haze that envelopes me that never leaves."
"Like a laser. Provided a discrete focus on action and a clear path of that action. It's a really bright laser, though, that makes it hard to see or focus on anything else while it's enabled."
"My gene is a bomb. A bomb that looks like a monster. Just ticking away. Sometimes speeding up, sometimes slowing down. Just to trick and mess with the person its inside of."
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