Towards an Understanding - Evaluating the Symbolic


An exhibition of this nature, dealing as it does with human disease and suffering, tends to elude the reviewer, indeed it seems to actively resist easy summation or aesthetic evaluation. The subject of breast cancer is one that elicits sincere and heartfelt reactions in both artist and viewer and the exhibition as a whole and in its particulars commands great respect. The intentions of the artists are noble and the themes expressed are emotionally charged. The artworks themselves are, for the most part, of the highest quality although that is somewhat besides the point. The organisers of the show have compiled a comprehensive catalogue in which the artists give honest and unambiguous explanations of their works’ meanings. The opinions and musings of a reviewer are largely superfluous in respect to such a straightforward and focused exhibition, nevertheless, perhaps a little more light remains to be shed on the exhibition.

Some themes, processes and strategies of narrative are evident in various ways with varying degrees of affect. One motif is the display or deployment of the body or body-part as an icon or testament of the affliction. A most powerful example of this is The Hair Shower, by Carole Baillargeon. In this startling piece a shower-head mounted on the wall drizzles human hair onto the floor, a stark reminder of the ravages of chemotherapy. This piece certainly sets the benchmark for this exhibition in terms of blunt yet restrained presentation of the facts. Another work in a similar vein is an untitled mixed media piece by Kelly Catton which depicts a breast and rib-cage cut away to reveal a highly coloured real or imagined interior. One is reminded of commercially available medical models at the same time the clearly hand-made nature of the work gives it a especially tender and poignant resonance. Several fine drawings focusing on mastectomy also grace the show by their simple and very courageous depictions, particularly Reality, by Sharon O’Hara, and Slashed, by Marjorie Moonfire.
At the opposite end of the stylistic spectrum is the abstract, almost formless, color-impression relating largely to dread, despair and overcoming fear. Teresa Trainor’s acrylic, Stages, is a surging Turneresque landscape anchored by dark greens at the bottom with flame-like reds and yellows scarring the upper three quarters. The entire space is in movement and conflict and the vivid colours elicit a sharp pang of distress and uncertainty. Shelley Rothenberger’s abstract mixed media work entitled The Stem, is a darker quieter exploration of similar territory in which the torn, fleshy surface of the piece remakes in a sympathetic form the fragile state of the diseased body.
Another kind of work creates a memorialising object which honours an individual or group or becomes a cathartic emblem of the disease. The stoneware sculpture, Amber Necklace, by Reed Weir establishes a totemic link to the memory of Elena Zebrauskaite-Weir. It is a highly symbolic piece, layered with many specific points of reference to the loved one, yet it carries the weight of these meanings with grace and exists as a strong aesthetic object independently of them. Another powerful emblematic piece is Beyond the Stairs, by Catherine Kozyra. This piece does not refer to an individual but embodies the sudden and tragic transformation imposed upon the victim of the disease. As with Reed Weir’s work the piece stand on its own merits as an engaging aesthetic object even while it conveys a specific and terrible message.
We also find throughout artworks in which the employment of sewing, stitching and weaving serve to conflate medical procedures and traditionally feminine skills. Works by Alison Kendall, Jane Vickery, and Sharon Breckenridge, remind us by virtue of the materials as well as by their painstaking and patient craftsmanship of the gender-specific nature of the topic. Naturally they also underline the characteristic reserves of long-suffering strength required to persevere in such forbidding circumstances. The piece by Pauline Phipps and David Grenier, a lightbox with needlework, entitled Cut/Poison/Burn, is particularly moving in this regard, contrasting the harsh clinical glow of the fluorescent with the delicate needlework speaks eloquently of the stern routines of the medical establishment versus the sometimes vain attempts of the individual to keep body and soul united.
I have touched on only a few of the works in this show to give some sense of the range of strategies and styles which the artists have adopted in pursuit of some brave sentiments and terrifying truths. All of the works maintain a level of sincerity and seriousness which commends them to the thoughtful viewer.

Does this exhibition succeed in fulfilling its purpose? There is an educational element to it, a feminist element, and what might be called hightening-of-public-awareness. What is most memorable and most useful is the exhibition’s reclamation of the individual from the statistical and societal pigeon-hole into which the “sick person” is placed when society adopts less than loving strategies to deal with illness. We witness the transformative stages of horror, helplessness, and also hope and recovery which the person must address throughout the progress of the disease and its treatment. We also can experience the poignancy of the grief of those who are left behind and also the particular and awful grief of the survivor who has undergone amputation. The testimony of the artists restores to us the vibrancy of the individual life even in the midst of pain and fear and stirs in us the deepest sympathies and anxieties. At the same time the viewer sees his or her own condition as one in which death and suffering is inevitably approaching, yet for the moment at least, he is unfettered and alive. This is the paradoxical condition we all share and awareness of which is enhanced and deepened by this exhibition.These pieces, through their grace and beauty, redeem in a small but important way some measure of the human suffering to which they testify.


- Mark Nisenholt

12/9/96