A series of artworks made during recovery from major cancer surgery and chemotherapy, 2025–26
In August 2025 I had major surgery for bowel cancer, followed by three weeks in hospital. The months that followed brought chemotherapy and the long, slow physical work of recovering from the operation itself — and that recovery is still continuing. Cancer takes time. There are scans to wait for, discomforts that linger, and a body that is still finding its new normal. Under Repair was made across all of that time — a snapshot diary of being unmade, and slowly, steadily, remade.
The act of making became a lifeline. Quiet and tender and mine. When my body felt unrecognisable and beyond my control, the work gave me a way back to myself.
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The Work
The series draws on fragments of WhatsApp messages sent to my family during those three weeks in hospital. Unguarded and unpolished, these messages hold what that time actually contained: the pain, the fear, the dark humour, and the fleeting, unexpected moments of joy that found their way in anyway.
Just as illuminated manuscripts wove together text and image to make meaning, the stoma bag covers combine hand-written words with intricate illustration. My WhatsApp messages are re-written in calligraphy using letterforms drawn from medieval manuscripts, and illustrated with celtic knots, references to bowels and hospital wards, and flowers. The covers respond directly to my surgery, exploring what it means to conceal, to celebrate, and to reclaim agency over a body that has been cut open and changed.
Materials and Process
The works use cyanotype on fabric, made across my kitchen table, my sofa, and wherever I happened to be well enough to sit — which, for much of the time, was not for long. Recovery from the operation, the effects of chemotherapy, and the basic physical difficulty of sitting comfortably all shaped the pace and rhythm of making. Some days that meant ten minutes. Some days more.
Why This Work
I have spent decades making work that holds other people’s experiences: of ageing, memory, illness, loss. Under Repair turned that practice inward.
It is the most personal body of work I have made. I share it because I believe these experiences: surgery, changed bodies, the strange intimacy of a hospital ward, the long slow work of recovery, deserve to be seen. Not tidied up or made palatable, but held, as they are, with honesty and with craft.
A stoma is an opening on the abdomen, connected to either your digestive or urinary system to allow faeces or urine to be diverted out of your body into a bag.
Living with a stoma is something many people do, and few people talk about. Everyday In the UK, 55 people have stoma surgery. I wanted to make work that meets that experience with the same openness and craft I’d bring to anyone else’s story.
Exhibitions
Under Repair is being shown as part of the Textile Study Group touring exhibitions Unmaking and Implement.
February- March 2026 Constance Howard Gallery, Goldsmiths
September- November 2026 Museum in the Park, Stroud
March- May 2027 Dean Clough, Halifax
Under Repair is an ongoing series. New work continues to be added as recovery continues.
For enquiries about the work, please get in touch.
Lois Blackburn 