My MA thesis was the Winner ex aequo of the CES Award for
Young Social Scientists from Portuguese-speaking Countries 2007. Biennial and
International award for the best research monograph written by young
researchers from any of the nine countries having Portuguese as their official language.
The resulting book - A Tinta, a Mariposa e a Metástase: a
arte como experiência, conhecimento e acção sobre o cancro de mama [The Paint,
the Mariposa and the Metastasis: art as experience, knowledge and intervention
on breast cancer] – was published in Portuguese by Edições Afrontamento and
CES [Centre for Social Studies].
The book presents a visceral and reflective analysis of
twenty-four art projects shaped around the feminine experience of breast
cancer. Exhibited on the Internet, these creations allow us to follow the
multiple uses and meanings accumulated by the art objects between the initial
motivations of their creators and the purpose behind their display on public
and digital space. Contradicting the simplistic concept that defines art as a
representation or reproduction of reality, I understand these objects and
projects as a constitutive part of experience itself, immersed on the way these
women live, understand and take action on cancer. It also redefines art as a
form of knowledge and transformative practice, not only as a way to objectify
and give personal meaning and form to inner experiences of disease, but also as
an emancipative counter-hegemonic exercise of activism infused with global
ambition.
The book also seeks to understand the continuities and
antagonisms that exist between art, biomedical science and embodied knowledge,
looking at their crossing points, hybrid configurations and conceptual
conflicts while dealing with breast cancer. Between the unmaking and remaking
of breasts, body and life, these female artists have shaped and activated
hybrid and eclectic objects. While some projects can be interpreted as
corrosive comments about the technological, pharmacological and relational
insufficiencies of biomedical science, others are exercises of dialogue and
interchange between the embodied, medical and artistic resources and
understandings made possible by the experience and treatment of cancer.
Departing from an epistemological conception of art and a
dialogical conception of social science, this investigation also carries the
purpose of presenting itself as a product of conversation. Questioning and
testing the possibility of a translation between embodied, artistic,
anthropological and sociological understandings, it intends to redefine cancer
as an external social construct against the notion of its spontaneous, corporal
and internal reproduction.
You can buy it at: Afrontamento, Apolo70, Bulhosa or Fnac
CONTENTS:
Carcino(génese)
de um texto: prefácio de uma escrita in situ (11)
As p(artes)
enredadas de um cancro:o contexto e o projecto (15)
State of
the “cancer art”: o desenho dos textos e os subtextos da arte (25)
Tecido
cicatrizado: as suturas entre a pele e a tela (33)
Matéria/objectiva:
o corpo, a câmara e a revelação do negativo (57)
Pincéis e
bisturis: cortes e misturas entre arte e biomedicina no espalhar da tinta (81)
Exposição
corrosiva: o impacto entre pele e mundo (111)
Caterpillar
Girls: estádio metastático (141)
AR(ma-)TE:
tradução conclu(inclu)siva entre arte, ciência e doença (167)
Plataformas
Digitais (181)
Referências
Bibliográficas (187)
For bibliographical reference:
Noronha, Susana de, 2009, A Tinta, a Mariposa e a Metástase:
a arte como experiência, conhecimento e acção sobre ocancro de mama, Porto, Edições Afrontamento & CES.
