A review of Embroidered Cancer Comic by Sima Elizabeth Shefrin (Singing Dragon, 2016)
By Derek Newman-Stille
Sima Elizabeth Shefrin takes a fascinating approach to comics, creating a comic out of textiles, embroidering her narrative onto fabric. There is a sense of intimacy about using textiles to talk about cancer that links the artworks produced to the history of textile work in the home. The use of embroidery, for me, evokes memories of embroidery samplers on the walls of the home, and transforming this textile basis into a comic allows a sliding of forms between the usually stagnant stitched image and the dynamism and mobility of the comic book.
Shefrin’s Embroidered Cancer Comic deals with the complexity of cancer and its presence in the home, exploring the disease not through its pathology, but through the effects it has on the family. Shefrin openly shares her experiences of her husband’s cancer and the intermingling of their feelings from his diagnosis through to his surgery. She examines the way that people try to take control over their cancer narratives either by changing their diet, or by avoiding the doctor, instead using alternative health practices to try to avoid medical intervention.
This is not a typical tragedy narrative of cancer, and Shefrin brings humour into her narrative, evoking the complex feelings of her readers, who are brought along through her emotional journey. Shefrin doesn’t shy from the personal either, bringing us into spaces of intimacy like the bedroom where readers can engage with questions about relationships where sex isn’t always possible, or isn’t possible in the same way as it was before.
Shefrin evokes the idea of change and transformation, using stitches to bring narratives of adaptation to life, exploring the way that bodies and their interactions shift when cancer is introduced into them.
To discover more about Embroidered Cancer Comic, visit http://www.singingdragon.com
To discover more about Sima Elizabeth Shefrin, visit http://www.stitchingforsocialchange.ca/home.htm
Dis(abled) Embodiment 