The Challenge of Pink: Subverting the Current Breast Cancer Awareness Paradigm Through Visual and Oral Storytelling [Volume I]

The Challenge of Pink: Subverting the Current Breast Cancer Awareness Paradigm Through Visual and Oral Storytelling [Volume I]

The Challenge of Pink: Subverting the Current Breast Cancer Awareness Paradigm Through Visual and Oral Storytelling is a practice-led research project that explores the living experiences of male breast cancer patients and articulates the emotional consequences of their treatment in the form of mixed-media installations. The project aims to raise awareness of male breast cancer, as males represent one in 125 diagnoses of breast cancer per year (Cancer Australia, 2021), but are largely underrepresented or not represented at all in informational literature about breast cancer in Australia and beyond. In recognising the gender disparity of representation in breast cancer awareness campaigns and literature, the artworks generated for installation aims to redress the representational imbalance by providing an alternative public awareness paradigm that gives visibility and voice to male breast cancer patients.Using Auto-ethnographical representations by male breast cancer patients and applied Grounded Theory coding practices (Charmaz, 2008); this research analyses how visual and oral storytelling may subvert the gender stereotypical assumption that breast cancer is a 'women's disease'. The project is informed by contemporary artists including Janine Antoni (America), Haya Cohen (Australia), Dan Elborne (Australia), Ann Hamilton (America), David Jay (America), and Hanna Wilke (America) and comprises creative work (70% weighting) and an exegesis (30% weighting). The project's creative development of video, watercolour painting, textile installations, printing plates, illumination drawings, artist journals and a coding journal are demonstrative outcomes of my analysis of two interviews and 165 written stories of international male breast cancer survivors. The exhibition of these multi-modal artworks creates an inclusive representation of all breast cancer patients. This project is intended, first and foremost, to create a platform where all gender of patients' issues are heard equally, coherently and in harmony. A further project aim is to create a body of artwork that speaks to a wider audience including medical practitioners, patients and their families, and breast cancer awareness advocates, of the need for more inclusive narratives of breast cancer awareness.

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