Cancer
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2020
Size:
Mixed media
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This piece is centred around ideas relating to ‘humankind’s relationship with nature’.
This relationship was approached from a biological view, in terms of humankind’s place and role in nature, and the specific type of relationship that humankind has with nature.
As a species, humankind has removed itself from the natural environment. We no longer play a balanced role in ecosystems in which we give as much as we take - we take much more from the natural environment than we give back to it. People are not a source of food for any other species, as we no longer have any natural predators, and even when we do die, our bodies do not feed back into the ecosystem as nature would have it. We preserve or dispose of human bodies in ways which prevent this.
There are three types of relationships in nature: mutualism, commensalism and parasitism. When looking at the relationship between humankind as a whole, and nature as a whole, the category it best fits into is parasitism. Unlike a virus which will often mutate and adapt to be able to assume a more commensal relationship with its host, humankind is not adapting to be able to adopt a commensal or mutualistic relationship with nature. Humankind can thus be compared to a cancer. Cancer cells cannot live without their host (as humankind cannot live without nature), yet they continue to take from their host without giving anything in return, and if given the opportunity they will do so until the host is destroyed.
This work uses a variety of materials to create a three-dimensional model of ‘human cancer cells’. Images of cancer cells under an electron microscope were used as a reference. The cell bodies have been replaced with clumps of tiny human figurines to represent humankind. The figurines were arranged to replicate the texture of the cell bodies seen in the reference images. This piece is intended to look like a model of regular cancer cells at first glance, and for the human figures only to be noticed upon further inspection.