What does it mean to be ‘renewed’ or ‘rebirthed’? What does ‘recovery’ truly entail? These enigmatic concepts are the creative tenants for artist Sarah Davis’ practice. Currently pursuing an MFA in Fine Arts at Goldsmiths University, her practice embraces a melange of wood carving, gilding, sound collage and poetry, leading a creative expedition on her Hodgkin’s Lymphoma diagnosis and the curative treatments she received.

Committed to a year-long treatment period in 2017, Sarah received chemotherapy, radiotherapy and an autologous stem cell transplant - a medical procedure whereby stem cells are harvested from a cancer patient’s blood or bone marrow before cell-killing treatments. These cells are frozen and stored until they can be safely infused back into the body, allowing the immune system to recover.

Raising its inquisitive lens, The Poorly Project had the pleasure of investigating Sarah's creative universe and how, eight years post-diagnosis, her practice continues to shape her understanding of malignancy.

A step into Sarah Davis’ studio and one can detect the scent of cedar and earth. Wood chippings are scattered across a workbench and clay forms are nestled between plaster molds and boxes marked ‘Fragile. Handle with Care’.

“Artistically, I've always been a bit of a magpie. I really like to use a lot of mediums and pick and choose what makes sense in the moment”

“I became much more so after my diagnosis” continues Sarah.

“Sometimes, I would not have the energy to work sculpturally, fearing infection when carving wood and being in a very precious state. It was important for me to find these new ways of creating artwork, being creative and processing my illness”

Developing a personal archive of sickness, Sarah accounts on the notion of medical ephemerality. Retracing her experience as she guides through her studio, she reaches out to reveal a small bronze sculpture. Its substance invites a sense of antiquity, with patination reminiscent of an excavated relic decorated by symbols from an obscure language. Close inspection reveals impressions of medical modernity - an imprint of pill packets crumpled with use and a few left untaken.

Existing as part of Sarah’s PUSH Project, the bronze pill cup acts as a revival of functionality, repurposing medication that Sarah religiously consumed to manage the side-effects of treatment. They now exist as vessels that bestow the ability of creative participation back to its maker, reinventing into functional art objects.

Sarah retells how she began to re-piece her creative process during treatment:

“I wasn't relying on the labour-intensive nature of carving in order to create something. I started pressing the pill packets into a prepared slab of clay, pouring plaster, and I could create these tiles which could then expand and move. I was in a bedroom studio at that point and they were taking over”

“It was the comfort of the domestic. I was home, I felt safe, I didn't have to travel anywhere”

Resting gently against Sarah’s palm, its accessible scale restores creative ownership and an intimate understanding of her health narrative. A touch-orientated bond between art and appreciator, Sarah hopes that the feelings embedded into the pill cup are felt and reciprocated, particularly by individuals experiencing sensory changes due to treatment.

As daylight grows stronger, the silhouette of a PICC line takes shape. Engrafted beneath a layer of fleshy wax, the catheter tunnelling chemotherapeutic infusions into Sarah’s body had now found eternal repose, embraced by a carved frame.

Lifting the piece Moulage(1) towards the light, Sarah shares:

“The first thing I casted was my PICC line. I decided to wrap it in cling film, press a slab of clay against it and take this imprint of it against my own body”

“It felt like a profound act of reclamation!” she exclaims. “There's this thing on my body that I'm so reliant upon for my treatment and survival. But it's inconvenient. It's painful. It's susceptible to infection. It's constantly there. It was summer”

“So to make something out of it, to make a cast and then to create a wax version - it was this moment where I could rebel a little bit and not be perfect”

Ripples and waves have been chiselled into its wooden frame - an oceanic time gate transporting deep into Sarah’s past and present contemplations. Despite the rigid materiality of her practice, her technical mastery and conceptual approach invite a reassuring fluidity. Submerging into her practice - the motif of fluidity perfuses, calling oceangoing life forms to its surface.

*The Practice of Recovery (3) (2019)* and Ouroboros(2) (2022)

The symbolic undercurrents behind snakes, octopi and whales are within their anthropological, medical, and mythical significance. Sarah hooks these elements onto her practice - sources of ardent self-reflection and inspiration - her revelations resounded through each creation.

Cradling the wooden coiled snake as she imparts details on its conceptual application, her tactile fondness towards each piece begets a sense of self-comfort. They are not only treasured creations that honour her lived experience with cancer, but mirror her state of being - that of dynamic change and uncertainty. Each lift and descent upon the piece speaks as if to say “thank you”.

Sarah holding one of her tactile sculptures *Untitled, Cedar (2024)*

Praising the physiological adaptation of octopi, Sarah delineates how “each sucker is neurologically linked to its entire way of moving through the ocean.

“For me, cancer was like an assault upon the senses. Your taste changes, the feeling of your skin, aches within your bones - everything is impacted. So to use a creature that is focused on how it sensorily navigates its environment feels quite empowering”

Drawing parallels between these creatures, curative cancer treatments and an autologous stem cell transplant - which she views as a form of “medical rebirth” - Sarah meditates upon the Ouroboros. An ancient symbol depicting a serpent devouring its own tail, it is emblematic of the cyclical nature of renewal and rebirth, present and preserved cross-culturally. Distant from alchemical phantasm, Sarah recognises that receiving chemotherapy, radiotherapy and an autologous stem cell transplant provoke a form of rebirth that is taxing and unenforceable of guarantee. Yet much like the Ouroboros, she evaluates how her practice highlights the unending process of cancer.

“It's an experience that I think I'll be navigating for a lifetime,” she says. “My practice has moved and mutated in a similar way”

“And so, what does my body look like now? What will that feel like in 20 or 30 years and however long I live? And how will my practice move and change to react, unpack, confront or reframe this experience? I'm grateful that I have a companion with me in the form of my art-making to help me process this”

Settled in a home made for an intimate body of work that continues to guest transformation, each of Sarah’s personal insights offers a seat to how cancer can be understood. Her practice offers malleability to how health narratives are perceived.

“It's a series of functions that we have absolutely no control over” she says.

“When cells divide, they make a mistake. So I didn't find it personally helpful for me to be angry in order to fill the unfairness. One-in-two people will experience cancer - that's such a huge number and it doesn't discriminate”

“I think changing that rhetoric is important going forward. What cancer does to the body is transformative in ways that are so difficult to manage. But there is this sense of being compassionate to that, adapting to those transformations and finding new ways to live with cancer. So many people live with cancer now and no single experience of the illness is the same”

Sarah wishes for her practice to bolster others to share their health experiences, and for conversational participants to “not feel like you need to sanitize your experience for others or to make it palatable”

“I want people to embrace their personal complexities. We can simultaneously feel sad or profoundly damaged by something, but also celebrate the body and the things that we are able to bring to the forefront of our lives”

You can learn more about Sarah Davis on Instagram and her official site.

All Images Courtesy of The Poorly Project

sarah davis