Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.04.2017, Page 38

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Vulnerable Beings
Emilie Dalum explores cancer, crisis and
healing in her new photo memoir

Words: Gabriel Dunsmith Photo: Emilie Dalum
'Emilie' Exhibition
Listastofan, open Wed-Sat, 13:00-
17:00. Exhibit open until April 19.
One day last February, Emilie
Dalum was getting ready to go
to lunch when her doctor called.
“I was only dressed in my under-
wear,” she recalls, “when
he told me I had lym-
phoma.” Emilie, a pho-
tographer, was 26 years
old. Over the next four
months, she documented
her journey through che-
motherapy, capturing
the isolation and shock
of cancer as well as her
personal determination
to reclaim her life. The
resultant project, a pho-
tographic self-portrait
titled ‘Emilie’, debuted
April 6 at Listastofan.
“When I pointed the
camera towards myself,
I could examine my personal
transformation in that period of
time,” she says. Emilie’s long-held
fascination with the intimate and
unseen—our thoughts, feelings,
circumstances, the ebb and flow
of our lives—saturates her exhibit:
she is shown stripped down, vul-
nerable, her body exposed. One
close-up shot depicts a reddened
circle, like a target, below her arm-
pit, marking the location of one
of her lymph nodes. Other images
show yellow dye on her skin, an
IV drip, her body in a CT scan-
ner, a clump of her hair. ‘Emilie’
exposes the dichotomy between
the sterility of cancer treatment
and the chaos of cancer as a
lived experience, when patients
are made sick in order to heal.
“I tried to maintain a nor-
mal life, but I could not escape
from the fact that I was a pa-
tient,” says Emilie. “I did be-
come my illness. You cannot skip
chemo; you have to surrender.”
The exhibit develops a conversa-
tion between the physical spaces
of cancer—waiting rooms, clin-
ics, hospital parking lots—and
the mental spaces—loneliness,
despair, resilience, fear. In one
shot, Emilie stands in an attic, her
head pressed against the far wall,
medical containers scattered at her
feet and a portrait of Frida Kahlo
on one side. She is trying to escape,
but there is nowhere to escape to.
Her body becomes a prison, a suf-
fering thing, and thus evokes other
corporeal traumas such as do-
mestic violence or sexual assault.
As Emilie put it: “You become a
product. Your body is property.”
But, of course, ‘Emilie’ also
speaks to the humanity that re-
mains even as chemotherapy drugs
course through one’s veins. In one
shot, Emilie stares at the camera
unflinching, as if daring viewers
to stand up to their own monsters.
Despite the needles, nausea, cath-
eters and scans, Emilie still has
agency in her life. This experi-
ence of cancer is hers alone, and
in ‘Emilie’ she owns it completely.
“Undergoing cancer has a lot to
do with confrontation,” she says.
“You get closer to death somehow.
When you’re young, you think
you’re going to live forever—you
get a lot of tattoos and piercings,
you drink a lot, you smoke weed.
But suddenly you have realized
[you are going to die] because you
have felt it on your own body.”
The journey that follows is a
heavily emotional one: cancer is
such a massive trial that “your
whole mindset is changed” by it,
Emilie says. Her self-portraits
speak to a fracturing that is also
an opening of oneself to the world.
Seen in such a light, her photogra-
phy is a radical act because it chal-
lenges contemporary social taboos
around emotions, death and illness.
After ten rounds of chemo,
Emilie’s cancer is gone. “I am still
finding my way back to life,” she
says. Her photo series represents
a memory—poignant, painful,
and fundamental to understand-
ing our own place in the world.
SHARE: gpv.is/dal05
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04.03.–
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