A new exhibition at the Wellcome Collection interrogates our relationship towards the body when suffering from chronic illness, through the work of Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery. Spence’s powerful self-portraits document her treatment for breast cancer during the 1980s in raw and sometimes confrontational images, while Ashery offers a contemporary alternate that considers how our experience of death and loss is manipulated by the digital age. Both artists build a complex picture of how we deal with diagnosis, the healthcare system, physicality and grief. Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery: Misbehaving Bodies is showing at the Wellcome Collection, until 26 Jan 2020.
