Patient / Artist: Em McClintock
The exhibits in this show are a collection of work following my second cancer diagnosis in late summer 2025. Birthed from a need to process & integrate, I turned to my creative process to hold and alchemize the intensity of my heartbreak, fear, and grief.
My intention was to blend my two worlds — an attempt to solve for the dissonance cancer creates. And to give my audience an engaging glimpse into the darkness I experienced.
Transmutation is the process of alchemy: changing one substance into another.
In ancient traditions, alchemists aimed to transmute base metals into noble metals; turn lead into gold. This process is also largely seen and practiced as an analogy for personal transmutation.
A spiritual quest to transmute darkness, stagnant feelings into light, constructive, life-affirming energy.
This exhibition is a three-part, immersive experience exploring fear, radical transformations, and the physical body, inside and out.
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Fear is a Portal
Cyanotype on trace paper, oil, thread
Hanging installation
2026
Chemotherapy transport bags were printed on trace paper and sewn together to create a portal; a threshold of overwhelm to pass through.
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Stitched Together
Cyanotype on watercolor paper, thread
Hanging installation
2026
Various medical imaging and cyanotype portraits shot on film before my double mastectomy are stitched together with thread. My physical body, inside and out, living between two opposing worlds.
About Me
Hi, I'm Em — a queer designer, emerging visual artist, and breast cancer survivor. This is my first solo exhibition inspired by my own cancer journey. After receiving a stage III diagnosis following a local reoccurrence, I needed creative avenues to hold the heaviness of it all. It birthed a need to translate the chaos of my emotional state into forms outside of myself.
I am inspired by the radical resiliency of the human body and the disconnect from it that often happens with a physical illness. My work lives at the intersection between the clinical and deeply personal and a quest to integrate the two.
I am also a ceramic artist, landscape designer, cyclist, and curious adventurer currently living in Vermont.