Compasión-Compassion

Acrylic and pencil on paper, 10,5 by 14 inches.

In 1932 Frida Kahlo made a lithography, "Frida and the abortion," documenting one of her miscarriages. I leaned heavily on that lithography to make this drawing in which I, in my turn, want to document different medical interventions I underwent and suffered from over the years.
In the top left corner, I wrote: "My heart reminds me that I need to cry over my changing body, and over the body I have lost," paraphrasing a line from a song by Lila Downs on "La Linea."
Above the skull I wrote: "This material body is merely transitory." The skull itself is an image from the Mexican "Day of the Dead" tradition. In that tradition colorful sugar skulls are used to decorate home altars, family grave sites or store windows. They usually bare the name of the deceased that is remembered.
To the left of the skull I wrote, "While the loss was consuming me, my fields were already turning green," paraphrasing the dedication to Maria Eliada from the movie "21 gramms," by Alejandro González Iñárritu and which to me expresses strong resilience. All these words offered-and still offer-me comfort, compassion, hence the title I chose.
To depict the thyroid cancer, I used a moth, sucking up my life's blood.
For the fetuslike figures on the left I used the work posted above which I made long after the surgery on my uterus, now ten years ago. It's called "Egg."
To the right I wrote in the margin of the drawing: "Words fall short of the experience." Words only touch the surface of what I went through.