Lucy is Sick (2020 – 2024), Book / Installation
Lucy is Sick fathoms a genre of its own: a children book for adults. It employs numerous coloring book drawings and short, lucid texts establish a playful tone set as a trap of seductions; it lures the reader into facing a harsh topic: multiple myeloma, cancer of the bone marrow.
The book reflects on the transformations of the body, on the language of illness, and on topics such as the representation of cancer as painless in cinema, and the public spectacle of cancer research, but it dedicates equal attention to minute details of hospital interior design, to fantasies and fairytales, and to a whole menagerie of animals.
An early publication of the book’s first few chapters was commissioned for the quarantine edition of Steirischer-Herbst festival in 2020, and distributed, under the guise of a coloring book, in the Graz public hospital and through other venues. The full edition of Lucy is Sick evolved over four years, and is forthcoming in Hebrew in 2024 by Pardes publishing house.
Lucy is Sick will also be presented as an installation, as part of the exhibition Roee Rosen: The Kafka Companion to Wellness, Kunstverein Hannover, November 2024 – January 2025 .For PDFs of the German and English 2020 Steirischer-Herbst booklet, go to the Writings and Artist Books page.
