My work is part of an exhibit at the Cowell Family Cancer Center in Michigan. My piece is that small pink one on the left.
Every Single Day is a visual art exhibition on display at the Cowell Family Cancer Center in the Spring of 2018. This complex, contemporary, and empathic exhibition was curated by students enrolled in the Aesthetics of Health Course at Interlochen Arts Academy. The student curators selected art works with the intention of deepening the conversation around illness narrative, and how artists working visually might broaden our understanding of illness, health and the body. They chose work that is genuine, and rooted in personal experience (whether as the patient, caretaker, doctor or clinical staff member). Exhibited works do not only address cancer, but examine a myriad of other health experiences.
Adrian Cornejo Tucson AZ This painting comes from my series “Concrescence”, a body of work conceptually driven by my experiences in how relationships and bonds are made. This painting in particular is about trauma, both emotional and physical, and how trauma contributes to (or even becomes a catalyst for) bonding. The illustration depicts two planes floating parallel to one another connected by what appears to be a tube formed by the hole in the upper plane. The imagery here is in part inspired by illustrations of black holes and the notion that a rupture in spacetime can connect two universes; a black hole doesn’t just crush matter into infinite density but that the matter gets expelled elsewhere. In this painting, the black is the metaphor for trauma and the planes themselves represent people. This demonstrates that during extreme duress equally great bonds can be made; through love and compassion, two can become one and serve as stabilizing entities for one another. Personally, the experiences I draw from this painting come from instances from both my childhood and more recently wherein shared trauma specifically about depression, abuse, and familial chaos have allowed me to befriend and gain a support structure from people who were once complete strangers. Much like the two planes in the painting, our common experiences and the resulted empathy were the things that were capable of bringing together two discrete worlds.
