Stages of Compromise

This ongoing photo and sculptural project is an attempt to externalize and actualize my experience with stage iv cancer. These works are about the body in relation to the environment, and the materiality of absence and presence of healthy and sick body.

Intentionality is what I am focussing on for myself and for my creative practice. I found too often I was being carried by the moment of inspiration, the beautifully chaotic flow, and with this my endurance wavered and my work suffered. I made an agreement with myself that I would allow the time it takes to account for structure and rhythm of my creative practice and processes. After sanctifying this promise to myself, I was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer. Suddenly, my understanding of rounds and routine took on a deeper, internalized understanding, and irrevocably influenced my creative practice. This ongoing photo and sculptural project "Stages of Compromise" is an attempt to externalize and actualize this experience that touches many lives. 

These works are about the body. They are about the body in relation to the environment, and the materiality of absence and presence of a healthy and sick body. I am greatly inspired by sculpture and land artists alongside formal black and white photographers. Therefore, this project combines photographic transfers on wood, silver gelatin prints, sculpture, and pigment prints on washi paper with watercolor. Wood becomes a metaphor for the body in my work, it is organic and malleable, it breathes and expands or shrinks and stiffens based on its environment. When I enact a photo transfer onto the wood, it is intentional and planned and evokes the memory I wish to express. Wood is the body and the image is the memory. Specifically referencing the work sample "Body", this piece contains an image of a storm-torn umbrella wrapped up within itself. When I made the image using a 35mm camera, I had just been diagnosed with cancer. The umbrella's plastic was melting into the pavement, and the object itself was nearly unrecognizable. When I had finished with the rounds of chemo and immunotherapy, I resurfaced this image from my archives and transferred it onto wood. To me, this piece bookends that period of time of the healthy and sick body and perfectly represents how my body felt during that process.

Cancer has touched many lives, directly and indirectly. The culmination of pieces that is "Stages of Compromise" is to showcase the beauty away from stigmatization, away from all the needles and hospitals, and into a space that celebrates art and life.