I will be FIVE YEARS, FIVE YEARS cancer free on October 28th, 2025. Lord willing, I will see that day and so many more after it. This is a huge moment in my breast cancer journey and my life. By making it to five years cancer free, my risk of recurrence has severely decreased. By making it to five years cancer free, I can likely get off all or at least one of the medicines I have been on for the last five years. For making it to five years cancer free, I am renewing my commitment to my health and well-being. For making it to five years cancer free, I am making offerings—one of which you can learn more about below.
More on this moment to come. I was asked recently what has kept me healthy by a fellow Black woman on this journey and look forward to sharing some thoughts about that soon. I have to gather my notes. I have to see what my oncologist thinks. I have to settle into this new moment, this new after, get a handle on what it is like to live and breathe and do and be from here, this place, one I wasn’t always sure I would reach.
I am filled with boundless gratitude. I will be celebrating this forever.
I shared the initial form of this work—a quilt and image of that quilt as a stand-in for my body in the chemotherapy bay—earlier this year.
That textile and its image have since been translated into a a four color screen print on 300 gsm Arches 88 with Deckled Edge paper. I did four rounds of chemo. I got injections every few months in the chemo bay for five years. A quilt can be the moment I found out. An image can be a portal to the after breast cancer engendered.
I hope this work reminds you of a loved one, invites you to interrogate the pink-ribbon industrial complex, and calls our attention to the prevalence of breast cancer diagnoses amongst Black women and all of the needless deaths of Black women as a result.
And as ever, I hope that by attending to and documenting my personal experience with breast cancer through this series, The Cancer Quilts (after Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals), space will also be held or open up for attention to collectivities—collective experiences, glory, and grief.
Four prints from the edition of five are available to be acquired.
You can also inquire by emailing me: studio@gabrielleionehickmon.com.
Thank you for supporting my practice. I’ll be back with…