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 a 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 built of everything I was afraid of - the uncertainty, the treatments and their side effects, a medical system I feel trapped in. But the overwhlem and darkness are temporary, so what lies on the other side?
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Stitched Together
Cyanotype on watercolor paper, thread
Hanging installation
2026
My various medical imaging stitched together with thread to my pre-surgery portraits shot on film. An exploration of the physical body, inside and out, living between two opposing worlds. A reminder that it is all made of my dna; my systems, my body, my cancer. The portraits capture the body and mind I am left behind.
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A Window In
Pen and ink on paper
2026
As I walked back through treatment for a second time, I used my drawing pad like an unprecious journal. A stream of consciousness and unconsciousness, raw emotion, creative concepts in their infancy, transmissions from my higher self. An unedited translation of my emotional state into other forms outside of myself.
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, and curious adventurer currently living in Vermont.