A Question of Beauty
 I was an adult confronting breast cancer. I was faced with a mastectomy followed by chemotherapy. I photographed my body and my history, which was now literally written upon it in A Question of Beauty (2000). This frontal nude self-portrait from the waist up showed my mastectomy scar, my face made puffy by chemotherapy and my bald head. I was interrogating the liminal space I now inhabited where I daily confronted conditions of wholeness and incompleteness, a body transformed from life-giver to life taker, gender that no-longer read clearly to outsiders, and lack of control over my body and life. 



My Truths About Breast Cancer
During an artist residency at the McColl Center for Visual Art, Charlotte, North Carolina in the fall of 2003 I continued to explore this topic with My Truths About Breast Cancer.  I wrote with a magic marker on the chest of a friend of mine who was undergoing cancer treatment my unspoken truths about the experience of having breast cancer.

Truth No.1
Digital Print made from Polaroid Positive/Negative Film
 50" x 40",  2003


Truth No. 2
Digital Print made from Polaroid Positive/Negative Film
 50" x 40",  2003 


Truth No. 3
Digital Print made from Polaroid Positive/Negative Film
 50" x 40",  2003 


Truth No. 4
Digital Print made from Polaroid Positive/Negative Film
 50" x 40",  2003 


Truth No. 5
Digital Print made from Polaroid Positive/Negative Film
 50" x 40",  2003 


Truth No. 6
Digital Print made from Polaroid Positive/Negative Film
 50" x 40",  2003


Truth No. 7
Digital Print made from Polaroid Positive/Negative Film
 50" x 40",  2003


Truth No. 8
Digital Print made from Polaroid Positive/Negative Film
 50" x 40",  2003


Truth No. 9
Digital Print made from Polaroid Positive/Negative Film
 50" x 40",  2003


Truth No. 10
Digital Print made from Polaroid Positive/Negative Film
 50" x 40",  2003



Truth No. 11
Digital Print made from Polaroid Positive/Negative Film
 50" x 40",  2003

Lives in Flux

While in residency at the McColl Center for Visual Arts I held a workshop and worked with a group of women in the middle of treatment for breast cancer. We did writing exercises, wrote our truths about breast cancer, made self-portraits, photographed places we found healing and I photographed their scars. At the end of the project I compiled the information and made the tapestry below which hangs at the Carolina Medical Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. The womwn tell me that it has become their icon and when they pass it in the lobby on the way to see their Doctors they run their hands along the bottom of it.

Lives in Flux
Tapestry, 3' x 6',  2004


Lives in Flux (detail)
Tapestry, 3' x 6',  2004

Lives in Flux (detail)
Tapestry, 3' x 6',  2004

Lives in Flux (detail)
Tapestry, 3' x 6',  2004


Fear Embroidery

About the same time I made this small hand embroidered piece entitled "Fear" on a found handkerchief. The word fear written in small red text in the bottom corner reflects on the fear that never quite leaves you once you have had cancer. It is always in the back/corner of your mind.


Fear
Found Handkerchief, Hand Embroidery
8" x 8", 2004



Nipple Plates, Nipple Pillows and Other Objects

When I made these pieces I was responding to the pink ribbon breast cancer phenomenon. I felt this fundraising and awareness campaign made everyone feel like they knew something about breast cancer without addressing the real losses and struggles of the women experiencing this disease. My goal was to draw the viewer in with seductively bright, beautiful, fun and seemingly sweet pieces of candy. Then came the disturbing part, upon close-inspection the participant would realize that it was shaped like a nipple and made out of a non-edible material. At this moment the work became a catalyst for personal dialogue with the viewer about the disease, from my viewpoint as well as theirs. The nipples resemble candy, and also reference milagros (small religious objects left at shrines by people seeking miracles). During this period I gave away many of the small nipples to individuals who had personal experiences with the disease and shared their stories with me. Looking back, I feel the process of cutting, sewing, shaping and casting these body parts was part of the healing process for me as I literally recreated the breast I had lost when I had cancer, a mastectomy, and chemotherapy in 1999.


Nipple Plates
Cast Resin Nipples and Found Glass Cake Plates
2003



Nipple Plates
Cast Resin Nipples and Found Glass Cake Plates
2003



Cast Resin Nipples
2003



Nipple Plates and Nipple Sets
Cast Resin Nipples and Found Glass Cake Plates
2003



Pink Sparkle Breast
Cast Resin Breast with Sparkles
2003



Nipple Pillow
Fabric, Resin, Thread
2003



Nipple Pillows
Fabric, Resin, Thread
2003



Nipple Pillow
Fabric, Resin, Thread
2003



Nipple Dress
Fabric, Resin, Thread
2003



Three Nipple Dresses and Purses
Fabric, Resin, Thread
2003


 The Nipplets wearing their nipple dresses passed out resin nipples in a performance that fall at an opening reception at the McColl Center.



Congrats to Ana Martinez for her new publication. She includes my work in Chapter 14 Relics, Artifacts, and Bones: Activating Migrancy's Traces Through Performance.

Link to the Book is here. 

https://www.routledge.com/Puppet-and-Spirit-Ritual-Religion-and-Performing-Objects-Volume-II-Contemporary-Branchings-Secular-Benedictions-Activated-Energies-Uncanny-Faiths/Orenstein-Cusack/p/book/9780367713799?srsltid=AfmBOopkns5VJkGs_3s6pRYiU17jbVE2DrfDTwSIE60jfMR14Arcdx5L

..........................

Thanks to Ana for highlighting this important subject.

SHIFTS - 2022

Shifts - A conceptual series of photographic self-portraits thinking about bordering and bodies.

The painting is gouache on old maps I found at a flea market in Italy. I took the maps apart and rearranged them into this borderline.....blue references water for me in this work and the black interrupted line the traditional marking on a map for a border or division of some sort. I have also been thinking recently about "The Commons" and how that historically existed.

Close to Home (November 19, 2024 – March 23, 2025) is a celebration of CAM’s collection featuring works by artists with a connection to our state, our region, and our home. Join us as we explore images of people and places that evoke the varied spirit of our community. Hidden treasures join beloved familiar works in a showcase of artistic voices, a collective search for the meaning of home.

Bridging Borders, July 17, 2023, Spello, Italy

We spoke on the phone and did some planning but Tamara Soldan and I had only one day in person before our performative collaboration to finalize what we were going to do. We gathered voices from friends and colleagues talking about borders in their lives prior to coming together. 

I wanted to know what people thought about borders and what exactly the word border meant to them.

Congrats to the McColl Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was so fortunate to have many ties to the McColl Center through a residency, exhibitions, and leading/teaching workshops through the Innovation Institute. It is a place of community, dialogue and a commons for the arts.

Standing Performance (2005-2023)

Standing on a very narrow history of patriarchal art that many of us grew up on. 

This collection of H.W. Janson's "A History of Art" books is the last thing left in my office before I retire. Coincidentally, my office was previously a women’s dorm room at UNC. I used to use these books in a performance designed to deconstruct art history on the first day of my Women and Gender in Contemporary Art Course.

Susan Harbage Page Wednesday, November 8th, at 7 pm EDT on Zoom Join us for a dynamic and exploratory conversation with Susan Harbage Page as she shares more than 15 years of meditations and explorations on the U.S.-Mexican border. As a socially engaged citizen Susan Harbage Page uses a variety of media including photography, performative interventions, sculpture, video, works on paper, and more.

New Exhibition Catalogue out. Published for the exhibition Susan Harbage Page: Embodied Cartography in Terretorial Disputesat Davidson College fall 2022. The exhibition was curated by Director of Davidson College Art Galleries, Lia Newman and includes essays by Ana L.
Contact Info
Contact Info
susanharbagepage@gmail.com
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