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Ellie Cheng

A MULTIDIMENTIONAL ANALYSIS OF VISUALITY AT THE END OF LIFE

What roles do images play at the end of life? How does art heal, connect, and form narratives in a hospital setting? How do we represent the unrepresentable? These questions I address in my senior thesis through three dimensions. One dimension captures, through an art historical and clinical perspective, how images have the potential to heal The second dimension involves my experience as an artist in residence in the palliative care unit of a hospital, and my subsequent role in giving patients a voice and agency through artistic self expression. The last dimension comes in the form of my Visual Component, an Artist Book that contains my own reflections, and thus ends my thesis with art creation for myself. Overall, I seek to examine how art, medicine, and the end of life overlap through the use of images.