What is Empowered Journeys?
The Empowered Journeys collaboration began in April 2024, as part of a wider PhD project being undertaken by Frankie Vale at the University of Glasgow, considering the representation of breast cancer surgery in art.
This is a co-curated project: at every stage it was produced by multiple co-curators through a collaborative process. The co-curators are Alexandra Perry, Elizabeth Lydiate, Frankie Vale, Katherine Baker, Mary Geraghty, Penny Wright, and Sarah Browne.
Through group discussions that took place in April and May 2024, co-curators decided on a programme of creative workshops, which they then took part in to produce the artworks and other materials on display here. The workshops were organised as follows:
- June: Bodycasting.
- July: Contextualising the Bodycasts.
- September: Creative Writing.
- October: Painting.
- November: Textiles and Mixed Media.
The bodycasting sessions considered bodily transformation as a result of surgery, creative writing and painting focused in on emotional journeys, and the mixed media session had a more open format to allow people to consider their journeys in a more general sense.
The purpose of this project was to generate new forms of representation and visibility from the perspective of people who have lived experience of breast cancer surgery. The works on display reflect the individual visual languages that emerge when people who have had surgery are invited to create the images that they want to present to the world, unburdened by the expectations and forms of representation that have been projected onto them by society, the media, and the medical establishment. The range and variety of responses on display here demonstrate a truly key takeaway from this exhibition: lived experience is individual and unique and should be understood as such. Acknowledging the uniqueness and individuality of each person’s lived experience, even if there are shared aspects of this experience, allows us to build communities and provide support more effectively.
The online exhibition space has been curated to recreate the chronology of the workshops. You are invited to flow through the space in the same way that co-curators flowed through the project sessions, developing their responses to their lived experience as they went. There are “Notes” included, which offer additional themes as lenses through which to consider the artworks. In many cases the artworks were not crafted with these themes in mind, but instead they came up as threads that can be woven between the artworks.
Use the drop down menu by hovering over (or tapping on it on a smartphone or tablet) “The Empowered Journeys Exhibition” on the toolbar at the top of the page to navigate the parts of the exhibition. First, you can “Meet the Co-Curators”, and then read through the “Notes” and “Notes from Elizabeth”, before you work your way through the artworks and writings on display, in the order in which the workshops were arranged.
Feel free, no matter your experience, to consider these works. We encourage you to share your own vision for how you would like to be represented and made visible.
Empowered Journeys 