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Imaginative transformations: breast cancer and art
Cancer and Society
Art Imaginative transformations: breast cancer and art Synchronous with major medical humanitarian themes of representing patient narrative, Saorsa describes her artistic practice as “an autoethnographic approach to emotion and feeling —a visual narrative of self and an extended dialogue through visual means”. This process is especially striking and successful in two mixed media collage-style drawings running more than 2 m in length. “One focuses on the historical and philosophical context of the breast cancer experience,” Saorsa explains, “and the other is very much in the ‘now’ and is based on my conversations with patients and medical staff both in Wales and across the country.” The large-scale oil portraits brim with luminous nobility: their purpose is to convey a feeling of personality, which they do well. Meanwhile, the composite pictures tell a varied story, evocative of the bravery, history, pain, and change—in body and emotion— inherent in breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. These collages invite a closer look. The collage incorporating historical references includes a portrait of Fanny Burney, the 18th century writer famous for her novels, diaries, and for the vivid letter to her sister describing undergoing a mastectomy to remove her right breast. The operation lasted 3 h 45 min, in an time before anaesthesia. Burney’s letter is an essential point of study in both the history of medicine and medical humanities, so it is apt that Saorsa included Burney in the artwork. William Stewart Halstead, a specialist in what he called en bloc mastectomy, and John Hunter, whose work enabled an understanding that cancer spreads through the lymphatic system, are also depicted in the collage. Sections of the composite pictures are strongly reminiscent of Barbara Hepworth’s hospital drawings. This
www.thelancet.com/oncology Vol 17 December 2016
result is perhaps inevitable when an artist sketches in an operating theatre, where scrub-wearing surgeons and draped bodies prevail, but Hepworth’s lightness of touch is reflected in Saorsa’s drawings, evoking pleasant echoes of Hepworth’s important collection of hospital art. Throughout these pieces, shifts from darkness to light, charcoal to pastel, and monochrome to colour, reflect the emotional turbulence inherent in breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. Saorsa blends quotes and statistics (“2013: 150 diagnosed every day”), images of soft fruit that are rotten in places, the eyes of her portrait subjects looking into the distance, delicate flowering bluebells, and what seems to be a symbol of hope—a white bird taking off into flight. This is a highly accomplished exhibition, inviting reflection on varied experiences, what Saorsa defines as a “polyvocal narrative,” of breast cancer. The blending of individual portraiture with detailed and, in parts, historical collage, creates a harmony of experience that is sometimes raw, often brave, and always thought provoking.
Kelley Swain
Jac Saorsa
“My approach now, to the body, and to the psyche, is exploratory, less concerned with how form is actually constructed, than with how it can be deconstructed; how it can be hurt, damaged, transformed, both physically and emotionally”, Jac Saorsa explains. Transformation and interpretation are strong themes in Breast Cancer: a creative intervention, the solo exhibition by Saorsa on display in Llandough (Wales, UK) from Nov 8 to Dec 7, 2016. Part of Drawing women’s cancer, a larger collaborative project aiming “to raise public awareness of the overall impact of the four gynecological cancers and breast cancer,” Breast Cancer: a creative intervention focuses on one microcosm within the world of cancer, inviting deep contemplation. The exhibition features four largescale oil portraits: two patients, a breast cancer nurse, and a surgeon. Saorsa intends these to create “a dialogue borne of aesthetic tension…that the viewer will ‘interrupt’ as he or she passes through the room”. Influenced by philosopher Gilles Deleuze, Saorsa is interested in the many relationships that occur in portraiture: the artist’s interpretation of her own work; the viewer’s interpretation of the work; the influence of research on the artist; and the possibility of the work looking back at the artist or viewer, in the case of a portrait. Dialogue becomes important in Breast Cancer: a creative intervention, because Saorsa includes quotations from patients she has worked with, based on their response to receiving a cancer diagnosis. In this combination of philosophical underpinning with face-to-face collaborations, Saorsa’s artwork is “focused on creating and extending dialogue about the condition itself, patient advocacy, and human existential experience of illness”.
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Art Imaginative transformations: breast cancer and art Synchronous with major medical humanitarian themes of representing patient narrative, Saorsa describes her artistic practice as “an autoethnographic approach to emotion and feeling —a visual narrative of self and an extended dialogue through visual means”. This process is especially striking and successful in two mixed media collage-style drawings running more than 2 m in length. “One focuses on the historical and philosophical context of the breast cancer experience,” Saorsa explains, “and the other is very much in the ‘now’ and is based on my conversations with patients and medical staff both in Wales and across the country.” The large-scale oil portraits brim with luminous nobility: their purpose is to convey a feeling of personality, which they do well. Meanwhile, the composite pictures tell a varied story, evocative of the bravery, history, pain, and change—in body and emotion— inherent in breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. These collages invite a closer look. The collage incorporating historical references includes a portrait of Fanny Burney, the 18th century writer famous for her novels, diaries, and for the vivid letter to her sister describing undergoing a mastectomy to remove her right breast. The operation lasted 3 h 45 min, in an time before anaesthesia. Burney’s letter is an essential point of study in both the history of medicine and medical humanities, so it is apt that Saorsa included Burney in the artwork. William Stewart Halstead, a specialist in what he called en bloc mastectomy, and John Hunter, whose work enabled an understanding that cancer spreads through the lymphatic system, are also depicted in the collage. Sections of the composite pictures are strongly reminiscent of Barbara Hepworth’s hospital drawings. This
www.thelancet.com/oncology Vol 17 December 2016
result is perhaps inevitable when an artist sketches in an operating theatre, where scrub-wearing surgeons and draped bodies prevail, but Hepworth’s lightness of touch is reflected in Saorsa’s drawings, evoking pleasant echoes of Hepworth’s important collection of hospital art. Throughout these pieces, shifts from darkness to light, charcoal to pastel, and monochrome to colour, reflect the emotional turbulence inherent in breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. Saorsa blends quotes and statistics (“2013: 150 diagnosed every day”), images of soft fruit that are rotten in places, the eyes of her portrait subjects looking into the distance, delicate flowering bluebells, and what seems to be a symbol of hope—a white bird taking off into flight. This is a highly accomplished exhibition, inviting reflection on varied experiences, what Saorsa defines as a “polyvocal narrative,” of breast cancer. The blending of individual portraiture with detailed and, in parts, historical collage, creates a harmony of experience that is sometimes raw, often brave, and always thought provoking.
Kelley Swain
Jac Saorsa
“My approach now, to the body, and to the psyche, is exploratory, less concerned with how form is actually constructed, than with how it can be deconstructed; how it can be hurt, damaged, transformed, both physically and emotionally”, Jac Saorsa explains. Transformation and interpretation are strong themes in Breast Cancer: a creative intervention, the solo exhibition by Saorsa on display in Llandough (Wales, UK) from Nov 8 to Dec 7, 2016. Part of Drawing women’s cancer, a larger collaborative project aiming “to raise public awareness of the overall impact of the four gynecological cancers and breast cancer,” Breast Cancer: a creative intervention focuses on one microcosm within the world of cancer, inviting deep contemplation. The exhibition features four largescale oil portraits: two patients, a breast cancer nurse, and a surgeon. Saorsa intends these to create “a dialogue borne of aesthetic tension…that the viewer will ‘interrupt’ as he or she passes through the room”. Influenced by philosopher Gilles Deleuze, Saorsa is interested in the many relationships that occur in portraiture: the artist’s interpretation of her own work; the viewer’s interpretation of the work; the influence of research on the artist; and the possibility of the work looking back at the artist or viewer, in the case of a portrait. Dialogue becomes important in Breast Cancer: a creative intervention, because Saorsa includes quotations from patients she has worked with, based on their response to receiving a cancer diagnosis. In this combination of philosophical underpinning with face-to-face collaborations, Saorsa’s artwork is “focused on creating and extending dialogue about the condition itself, patient advocacy, and human existential experience of illness”.
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