Art, Breast Cancer and the Culture of Illness

Susan Bell (Bowdoin College, Maine, USA)
Alan Radley (Loughborough University, UK)

 This paper discusses the work of two contemporary women artists who suffered from breast cancer and used their art as way of living with their illness. Selected photographs from the work of Jo Spence (British) and from the artist’s books of Martha Hall (American) are used as the basis for analysis. These works are (a) attempts by these women to answer the question ‘how do I survive?’ and (b) products designed to influence ideas about illness and treatment in the modern world. We argue that artistic endeavor provides a medium for therapy in relation to the trajectory of personal illness and contributes to a social dialogue in which these objects offer nodal points of communication. The particular ways in which art objects signify – providing aesthetic as well as scientific and political messages – is discussed as an important turn in the ongoing debate about illness and social care.