There are experiences that resist easy description. Cancer can be one of them — not only for those diagnosed, but for the family members who become caregivers, the people living through uncertain prognoses and the survivors discovering what life looks like afterward.
Brushes With Cancer begins in that difficult territory and asks an unusual question: What might happen if those experiences were given to an artist?
Developed and managed by the nonprofit Twist Out Cancer, Brushes with Cancer is a four-to-six-month program pairing visual artists with “Inspirations” — people impacted by cancer, including patients, survivors, thrivers, previvors, and caregivers. The pairs meet in person or virtually, supported by mentors and staff, before the resulting artwork and the stories behind them are revealed publicly.
(Photo: Morgan Sophia, Courtesy Arsht Center)
"Blue Thread of Legacy" by Dominik Ambroise
Now in its third year at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County, the program culminates Sept. 24 in a free opening night reception and public exhibition, bringing together participants, families, artists, and the Miami community.
But the artwork is only one part of the process.
“You're meeting a visual artist for the first time, and the process and the program asks you to be vulnerable, to share your story and share your journey, and then have someone interpret that through visual art,” said Jairo Ontiveros, vice president and Dorothea Green Chair of Education and Community Engagement at the Arsht Center. “It can be scary, but it can also be cathartic.”
For Delphine Gervais, a licensed clinical social worker with South Florida's Breakthrough Care and Resource Center, that vulnerability meant revisiting her experience caring for her mother, who received a late diagnosis of stage-four breast cancer.
(Courtesy Delphine Gervais)
Delphine Gervais and Dominik Ambroise
Gervais was paired with Pembroke Pines-based multimedia artist Dominik Ambroise. Before they had even begun to delve deeply into Gervais' story, the pairing revealed an unexpected connection: Both women are Haitian.
“I really appreciated the fact that we have a shared heritage,” Gervais said. “We connected on many fronts when it came to shared culture, shared perceptions, and similar perceptions around caregiving.”
That shared background opened another conversation, one about cultural ideas surrounding illness and strength.
“We understood that, as a culture, resilience is part of how we're defined, and vulnerability is not in our conversations,” Gervais said. Cancer, she added, can force that vulnerability into the open. “Who wants to acknowledge that they're ill, especially women who have been known to be strong and independent?”
For Gervais, the project also provided a way to discuss a less understood aspect of caregiving: anticipatory grief, mourning changes and losses even while the person one loves is still alive.
“I think it's an important conversation to continue to have, to normalize what it looks like to have anticipated grief because the person is still here, but you know that the outcome isn't favorable,” she said, “and what it looks like to live out that existence not having the language for it.”
Eventually, Gervais entrusted Ambroise with something more tangible than her memories. She handed the artist an entire bin of her mother's belongings.
“I literally gave Dominik the entire bin and I said, ‘Look through here. See what it is that you feel can be of use to doing this, because these are my things that belonged to my mom.’”
Her mother had been creative herself and sewed clothes for her daughter when she was growing up, something Gervais admits she didn't always appreciate as a schoolgirl.
“Now I take pride in knowing that my mom created things,” she said.
Among the belongings were fabrics her mother had intended to use but never had the opportunity to transform into something herself.
“I'm excited to see how Dominik has been able to utilize that to bring about something beautiful,” Gervais said.
Exactly what Ambroise created remains a mystery to her.
“I have not seen the artwork, and that's intentional,” Gervais said. “I said I wanted to see it right along with everyone else.”
Ambroise is equally conscious of what that first encounter with the work may mean.
“I don't want her to be sad,” Ambroise said. “I want her to be happy to see the piece.”
As a daughter herself, Ambroise said she understood the emotional weight of Gervais' relationship with her mother.
“I know exactly what the emotional connection is between a mother and a daughter,” she said. “It was a really touching story.”
Her task, then, became not simply illustrating what Gervais had told her, but translating something less easily seen.
“Art can express things that we cannot see sometimes,” Ambroise said. “So, I really tried my best to translate what she would love to see.”
That act of interpretation took a very different form in another pairing.
Artist Jasmin Genao was paired with Vicki, a two-time cancer survivor who turned 80 in May. Genao found herself intimidated not by the assignment, but by the magnitude of the personality she was trying to capture.
(Courtesy Arsht Center)
Jasmin Genao
“She is very independent, strong-willed,” Genao said. “My dilemma when it came to creating my piece was that I felt like I had such a big task on my hands to kind of bring her spirit to life.”
A conventional portrait didn't seem sufficient. Neither did abstraction.
“I wanted to do something that would really honor her and her journey and who she is,” Genao said. “I actually had creator's block. I couldn't even come up with a concept because I felt like nothing would justify how much I admire her.”
Instead, Genao began thinking about the colors she associated with Vicki — reds and purples that seemed almost to vibrate around her — and about the disparity between chronological age and the youthful presence she encountered.
“If you were not to meet her in person and you take away the physical — the gray hair, the aging skin — you would not think that she is an 80-year-old woman.”
Genao ultimately imagined Vicki as she might have appeared decades earlier, creating a portrait of the younger woman without actually knowing what young Vicki looked like. She depicted her nude and chose not to show the scar from her breast cancer.
“It doesn't define who she is,” Genao said.
In her artist statement, Genao described what Vicki ultimately taught her: “True resilience is not found in the absence of fear, but in the decision to keep living despite it.”
That connection, rather than any particular artistic style or medium, is at the core of Brushes With Cancer.
Ontiveros said past participants have continued relationships with their artists and returned to later receptions with their families. Over time, something resembling a small community or support group develops among people whose experiences otherwise might have remained intensely private.
For some, he said, communicating through art may even make it possible to share parts of their cancer journey with friends and family that had previously been difficult to articulate.
“Maybe before this program they weren't as comfortable communicating their journey of dealing with cancer,” Ontiveros said. “Through this program, through this process, they were able to share it in a very different way and convey it in a very different way to loved ones.”
The artworks will remain on display at the Arsht through October and will be offered for sale, with proceeds supporting the center's education and community programs.
Ambroise sees the language of art as capable of extending that conversation far beyond one artist, one inspiration, or even one culture.
“Art is an international language,” she said. “We have to use it as much as we can and make people hear our voice.”
For Ontiveros, however, perhaps the most remarkable act occurs before the paint, fabric, or other materials become art: Someone first has to decide that a deeply personal story is worth telling.
“What's special for me to see is a group of people that have agreed to self-identify and identify themselves because of what they're going through,” he said, “and to also come and gather around and celebrate each other's power in sharing their personal story.”
Then they hand that story to someone else.
“To sit and listen to them, creating a piece about it,” Ontiveros said, “talk about a deep involvement in somebody else's personal life.”
And somewhere in that exchange, between illness and survival, grief and memory, artist and stranger, something private becomes visible.
IF YOU GO
Brushes with Cancer Exhibition and Celebration
Opening night Sept. 24
On display through Oct. 30
Lobby of Knight Concert Hall
1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami
Free, with RSVP