Intertwining community, art, and illness: Cancer, interpreted and made visible
- Done during COVID-19 -> social networking effort by Twist Out Cancer -> program called Brushes With Cancer pairing patients with artists to capture cancer experiences
- The program also address the fear, anguish, and isolation/loneliness of cancer
Juliet R. Harrison sent me an art object that made the darkness visible. She had gutted the book — cut into its cover, torn out most of its pages — and then sutured it back together with splints, paste, fragmented words and wire. Broken, hollowed and rebound, it concretized the evisceration I had tried to protest.
Susan Gubar, speaking about her cancer memoir being rendered into an art piece.
- Reflections:
- Experiences are turned into storytelling which are then made physical through art
- Transformative capacity of multimedia portrayals
- Having someone else interpret cancer patients’ stories through art can be therapeutic and illuminating -> the patient can see their own stories and experiences reflected through someone else’ eyes -> the artist, while an outsider to the cancer experience, can act as a mirror to the patient
