My MA thesis was the Winner ex
aequo of the CES Award for Young Social
Scientists from Portuguese-speaking Countries 2007. Biennial,
International and Intercontinental award for the best research project/monograph
written by young researchers from any of the nine countries, of the four Continents [Europe, Africa, America and Asia] 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] – is now
published in Portuguese by Edições Afrontamento.
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, we’ll 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.
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 o cancro
de mama, Porto, Edições Afrontamento.
