A breast cancer awareness charity launched an exhibition at the Art Academy in Southwark to highlight the strength and struggles of those affected by the disease.
Entitled Facing the Future and organised by Breast Cancer Now, the showcase centred around 16 portraits of people that have experienced the condition’s debilitating effects, whether in a personal capacity or as a friend, relative or carer to someone diagnosed.
Timed to coincide with Breast Cancer Awareness Month, in October, the paintings were paired with spoken testimony from the subjects, helping them reclaim agency over a disease whose diagnosis can feel staggering.
Emma Campbell, 54, who features in one of the paintings and has had breast cancer three times, spoke about living with the condition.
“It was like a big boulder that blocked out the sun and everywhere I went, there it was,” she told the Londoners.
“I wasn’t present. I wasn’t able to be the mother or the partner I wanted to be. Because when every waking thought is consumed by fear or thoughts of death, then you’re not there, you’re just disassociated.”
Breast Cancer Now spokesperson, Rachael Franklin, said the exhibit aimed to communicate the resilience of patients like Campbell and dispel the myth that breast cancer’s relatively high survival rate diminishes its seriousness.
She said: “It can be a grueling treatment, it can really change you, it affects your life, whether it’s your identity and sense of self or your relationships with your family, your partners or your work.”
Paul Starns, one of the two artists commissioned for the exhibit, touched on the complexity of the condition, saying: “Breast cancer isn’t a single disease, there’s not a single panacea that will cure all ills. It’s a whole plethora of interrelated issues.”
However, while the exhibit explored the gravity of a diagnosis, Franklin said it also embraced the joy of human endurance and the ‘desire for a brighter future’.
Another of the commissioned artists, Ruth Swain, said the artists wanted to capture the vulnerability and emotion of the subjects beyond merely their connection to cancer, telling their stories through an immersive audio-visual experience.
Campbell, who now works as an author and motivational speaker, wanted the exhibit to inspire visitors with ‘ordinary’ stories of strength reflected on the walls of the Art Academy.
“We represent everybody. There are portraits of people of all ages with all different kinds of experiences and I hope that maybe by seeing other people’s resilience, people might recognise their own,” she said.
Having just completed the Royal Parks half-marathon while in active remission, she also hoped the exhibit would change the simplistic ‘death or survival’ narrative around breast cancer by highlighting patients living full lives with the disease.
Undergoing painful surgeries for lymph node removal and mastectomies as well as chemotherapy – Campbell hit a ‘mental and emotional rock bottom’ before her second recurrence in 2014.
However, finding examples of breast cancer patients thriving online helped shift her mindset.
“I stepped into Instagram and realized how many women weren’t just diagnosed with the disease, but living with it and living well,” she said.
“And that was huge, because for me, everything was so black and white. You know, cancer equals death, recurrence or a secondary diagnosis, certainly equal death.
“I didn’t know how to look to the future for a very long time, because the fear was so dominant. And I do look to the future now. And that’s something I’ve had to consciously allow myself to do.”
Indeed, visualising a new kind of future for cancer patients was at the heart of the exhibit, as indicated by its name, ‘Facing the Future’.
The initiative raised more than £100,000 for Breast Cancer Now – helping to fund research as well as awareness campaigns teaching women to check their breasts more regularly.
Franklin says the money raised from the exhibit will go a long way in helping the charity achieve its goal that by 2050, no one diagnosed with breast cancer will die from the disease.
Support from the London community ensured such a rampant success, with artist Swain reflecting on the opening night of the exhibition, saying: “The whole evening I felt completely overwhelmed because people couldn’t even get in the door, it was so packed!
“It felt like this project we’d been talking about for so long had come to a fantastic finale and I’m just really proud that we could do something like this and pull it off.
“Art needs to mean something in the world and if we can do something to raise awareness for an important issue then that’s a really good thing.”
Facing the Future ran from 9 to 14 of October and will be moving to Oxford in 2026. All artworks and accompanying words and audio can be found on the Facing the Future website.
Campbell’s work can be viewed on her Instagram page, under the handle @limitless_em.
Featured image credit: Sarah Page
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