Tumours and Tubers, Anne Steves
Digital photo images documenting Anne Steves’ experience of breast cancer treatment in black and white paired with written texts that demonstrate comparisons in the life forms of other organisms. Coloured backgrounds relate to the natural forms written about.
Title: Tumours and Tubers
Artist: Anne Steves
Date: 2024
Medium/Materials: Digital print
Dimensions: 9 images, 25 cm x 38 cm each
Form/Genre: Print; Photograph
Key Terms/Subject/Tags: Cancer; Breast cancer; Patient experience; Treatment journey
Artist Statement:
Anne Steves is a Welsh/ Canadian multidisciplinary artist living in the small community of Cumberland on Vancouver Island. In her practice, she makes craft-based objects that hold the potential for creating empathy connections with communities, species, and landscapes other than her own. By working with materials associated with the home (wool rugs, textiles, found thrift store items) she seeks to make spaces where we can ask difficult questions in comfort. At the heart of all Steves’ projects lies the question “How might we relate here?”
For the past decade her work has involved creating empathetic connections in difficult times. This has taken the form of two ongoing and multi-site projects; A Luring Objects in which Steves makes human scale fishing lures for waterside connections and Flight [Cage] where she produces and interacts with bird shaped rugs for thinking about human/avian relations during the climate crisis. Both projects have involved embodiment, photo-documentation and the written word.
After being diagnosed with Stage 2 Ductal Carcinoma breast cancer at the age of 40, Steves began a photo diary that was shared through her Instagram page to reclaim her own life narrative and reveal the hidden processes behind treatment. She has continued this process in her new project Tumours and Tubers, where Steves finds empathic connections with other organisms through the similarities between their life processes and my ongoing treatments. It is a project of embodied experience and outreach to others in times of trouble.
Cultural Context / Story Behind the Work:
Steves was diagnosed with stage 2 Ductal Carcinoma in 2024. She was 40 years old and it was her first mammogram. This project gave her a focus during treatment as she shared her experience with others to demystify the process.
Rights for this Image:
This digital image is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0. You are free to share it for non-commercial purposes, as long as you credit the artist.
Learn More:
Instagram: @annesteves_artist