BEAUTIFUL IN BLUE: Finding a Sense of Agency and Awe in Printing My Glioma | Katerina Obscura

“As a brain cancer patient I have access to highly detailed and specialized medical imaging of my brain. This particular image was part of the series that initially discovered and diagnosed my insula glioma. Looking at a two dimensional view of a mass that marks the likelihood of my premature death can be upsetting, but making it into a cyanotype was very therapeutic for me both as a process of having control as a printmaker and to create beauty from something so awful. Printing this image was healing because it allowed me the opportunity to gently hold my brain and its radical cells.”

Katerina Obscura is a young adult, who is based in rural Canada and living with a life limiting cancer and resultant disabilities. A geographer by education, Obscura's art uses analogue and historical processes to consider the ephemerality of human life and our connections to nature. Photography and printmaking enable her a sense of control that she has lost in most other areas of her life since her diagnosis.