TreAcherous Titties: A solo exhibition by Berenice Badillo
August 11 - August 28th
Audre Lorde in her book The Cancer Journals (1980) stated that pain should not be wasted. Cancer came for me in 2023 and turned my life upside down. My whole world stopped, and I felt scared and powerless. I decided to utilize this solo show, this website www.treacheroustitties.com and my poetry book Will My Nipple Rise like Jesus to tell my story. I was right in the middle of restoring a mural I painted in 1997, in Chicano Park, which houses the largest collection of Chicano murals in the world. Together with my girl gang www.xoque-artinmotion.com we painted the 65-foot behemoth and created the tallest mural in the park made about women, by women, for women. I used art as my beacon, my pen as my sword, and my tears as the oil in my engine to get through Cancer. Inspired by the words of Audre Lorde, I created alchemy out of my Cancer diagnosis and made Cancer my bitch. Yet, my life has forever changed, and, like many survivors, I worry if it will return.
Breast cancer stories are often taboo. On average, 2.3 million women get breast cancer worldwide. The coronavirus-19 pandemic caused delays in diagnosis and management. Latinos in America have the highest incidence of Cancer. Latinas are more likely to be diagnosed at a younger age and with more aggressive cancers. Black women have a 40% higher death rate from breast cancer than any other racial and ethnic group, despite having a slightly lower incidence than White women.
If you have just been diagnosed with breast cancer or know someone who has, remember grief is important. If a woman decides to get reconstruction it’s not “a free boob job” and if she doesn’t, flat is beautiful and great warriors have scars. Don’t give advice or try to fix it, the best thing you can do is hold someone's hand.
Poetry from the exhibition
