Portraying cancer patients' resilience through contemporary art

Limited by the professional backgrounds of medical practitioners, the health-education exhibitions common in Taiwan are always knowledge-oriented, placing medical information front and center while starting less often from patients' own intense feelings or states of mind. As a result, they lack the elements that stir people's deeper emotions and compassion, making health education a one-way, overly flat transmission. Audiences lack the pleasure of exploration and the chance to form their own subjective impressions, quickly losing interest in the exhibition's content—so despite the enormous manpower, resources, and time invested, it is hard to resonate with viewers.

Combining art and medicine: not just health education, but healing

This March, the Cancer Series art exhibition curated by the USC Fisher Museum of Art overturned the science-popularization mindset. By presenting the physical and emotional experiences of artist Margaret Lazzari during her breast cancer treatment, it not only drew many art lovers and cancer patients, but also created empathy and compassion within the exhibition, letting the general public feel the profound emotional wound and health threat that breast cancer inflicts, as well as the hope placed in new treatments.

Portraying life's resilience through art

Margaret Lazzari is a professor emerita at the USC Roski School of Art and Design and is highly regarded in the art world. She created USC's design curriculum and served as chair of the Painting and Drawing department, Associate Dean of Art, and Vice Dean of Academic Affairs. Her work often explores human emotions and psychological change, which finds its most vivid expression in the Cancer Series.

Created between 2003 and 2004, Lazzari's Cancer Series comprises more than thirty paintings, drawings, and images that document the extreme emotional swings and psychological trauma she experienced during cancer treatment. The exhibited works show the dual physical and psychological impact of cancer treatment and the process of rebuilding one's sense of self. Her work emphasizes how the connection between the body and self-perception is altered by cancer, and how an artist can express hope and rebirth throughout the treatment process through art.

Exhibition highlights

The Cancer Series exhibition not only presents Lazzari's personal experience but also offers, through art, a platform for understanding and resonance. In her works, viewers can see the complex emotions of the cancer treatment process—from despair to hope, from pain to rebirth. Curator Danielle Sommer said the exhibition aims to give viewers a deeper understanding of a cancer patient's inner world, and through art to break down language barriers so that people can feel a cancer patient's pain and courage more directly.

The works in the exhibition are not only a record of her personal experience but also a form of encouragement and support for all who have gone through or are going through cancer treatment. This exhibition underscores just how important the power of hope and rebuilding is in cancer treatment; beyond offering spiritual comfort to those suffering from cancer, it also lets more people understand and pay attention to the psychological and emotional world of cancer patients, and inspires society's concern for cancer treatment and support.

─ PatientsForce, Media-WIND Health Group, Director of Health Communications, Gu Wan-ru