Jill Mueller: Art, Life and Living
When Sally first contacted me about her project on heartbreak, she told me that she’d seen my artwork years before in a group show about embodiment and emotion and it now prompted her to reach out. The Girl Who Carries Her Burdens in Her Hair was an illustration I made to express how we navigate grief over the long periods following a loss. (We’ll share more about that piece in a future post.) I’m so moved that the image stayed with Sally after so many years, and I’m delighted to be involved with this project today.
I am an interdisciplinary artist in London who works with creative writing and visual art to explore what it means to be human. In my practice, I weave together documentary and imaginary worlds to explore the ordinary-extraordinary experiences of humans and the natural world we belong to. I’m interested in health and our relationship to nature; in what moves us and how we make meaning; in how engaging art can help us process difficult experiences and teach us about ourselves. My work is grounded in real experience but hopes to provide a poetic perspective on life and living.
I trained as a figurative oil painter in the USA and had been living in London for a year when I tested positive for a breast cancer gene (BRCA) mutation in 2012. In a moment my world exploded, and over the coming years everything changed, from the new scars that marked my body to the work that I bring into the world. My art practice moved away from an emphasis on observation of the physical world in front of me, to focus on exploring different ways of expressing an experience or an emotion from within.
Lisa (L) and Self-portrait with a genetic mutation (R)
I chose to undertake preventive surgeries to reduce my cancer risk, removing my healthy breasts, ovaries and fallopian tubes and replacing what was lost with implants and HRT. Early in my medical process, I invited artist Maja Daniels to accompany me on what I knew would be a transformative journey. See Me Through This explores the emotional and mental transformation that takes place alongside the physical one, merging creative non-fiction with photography, archive imagery and creative interventions. Over several years, we explored the complexity of the preventive choices I made and my experience as a patient beyond the hospital. The collection of work has been designed as an art book that we’re working to publish.
Images: Maja Daniels; Stitching: Jill Mueller
In 2016, these explorations led me to Central Saint Martins and an MA in Art & Science. It was there that research became a central part of my practice and I broadened the tools I use to make art. Today the materials and techniques I use change in response to each project: from alternative photographic techniques, embroidery, printmaking and mixed-media, to working with archive imagery and creative writing. The embodiment of emotion has become a thread that runs across my practice.
Anatomy of a Choice is an installation that builds on my work about the breast cancer gene mutation, bringing it into a physical space. Peepholes and lenses provide a glimpse into the patient’s inner world, revealing images, objects and medical material. Birdsong fills the air. With this work, I hope to bring the viewer into an intimate experience through which we can build empathy for one another’s experiences.
In 2020 I captured my distress over the loss of life due to COVID by working with fabric and thread and statistics. With In Memoriam, hand-stitching on cyanotype fabric of the night sky became a ritual to track, come to terms with, and honour the dead in the first 100 days of COVID-19 deaths in the UK.
In Memoriam, Panel 1 of 3
What we share/what we hold back is a more recent work that responds to the experience of a cancer patient’s partner and focuses our attention on the disease’s wider impact. The embroidered story has been redacted in thread to express in the simplest form how cancer transforms families’ lives. How language becomes complicated and incomplete; how we edit our thoughts and select what we share – at first to support or protect our loved ones (the patients), and later in telling our own stories. It explores how we endure hardship, and how we can thrive again.
What we share/what we hold back
In addition to exhibiting my work, I give talks and conduct workshops focused on art and health, and I am an Honorary Lecturer for University College London's Institute for Women's Health.
I’m really looking forward to participating in the After Love project and watching it unfold!
Visit www.jillmueller.com for more about my work or follow me on Instagram @jillmariemueller.
