Edmonton art exhibit shines new light on cancer survivor

Historically, a cancer survivor can be defined as someone free from the disease after treatment, but a group of Edmonton students want to expand that definition by using an art exhibit to shine a light on those cancer survivors whose treatments never stop as their disease is considered chronic.

“Associating the word cancer with dying, and I said to my husband, the first words I said to him were goodbye,” said Liz Ingram, who is living with chronic cancer.

Ingram was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2014, which ended up spreading to her brain.

A combination of chemotherapy and surgery was successful, but more than 11 years later, she still needs to take a large number of pills.

“My daily life is taking a pill before bed every night. That’s it. That’s my treatment,” said Ingram.

Ingram is sharing her story of how cancer still impacts her daily life and how she found a way to heal through an art exhibit called ‘Longeviti’ at the University of Alberta.

The nursing student’s research project found ways to visualize cancer survivors’ stories, for Ingram, including her brain scan.

“Making those prints after that period was really, really healing because you lose the sense of yourself. You get so involved in creating, and I think that’s really, really healthy not to be always focused on yourself,” said Ingram.

The art exhibit is on at the Stanley Milner Library.

“This one was a little bit unique in that we had a goal, in terms of what does if you were to describe to somebody what your life looks like living with advanced cancer, how would it look?” asked Edith Pituskin, a researcher with the Faculty of Nursing and the University of Alberta.

Sam Schembri, an artist and curator, said, “This art is to educate not only the public but also the nurses, the healthcare professionals. Very often, we are almost ‘hot potatoing’ these patients along, and we want to be able to spend more qualitative time with them to get to know them better. And that informs us how to take care of cancer patients in a better light.”

Ingram hopes this art will help give other cancer patients hope.

“It’s really important that people have hope and that people take a lot of the initiative to find out what helps,” said Ingram.