We Heal

with Teaching Artist Nora Valdez

April - December 2020

EVENT: WE HEAL Closing Celebration

Friday, March 19, 2021, 6:30-8:00pm ET on Zoom

Join us for the presentation of the final "WE HEAL" book showcasing the artwork of project participants, as well as a mini-documentary produced by Valdez and artist Donte Thomas sharing the participants' stories and experiences.

watch the event

View the book

About

“WE HEAL” is an art project created by artist Nora Valdez in collaboration with the Cancer Sickle Cell Support Programs at Boston Medical Center. The artist also included patients from the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and youth from the Urbano Project.

WE HEAL encouraged patients, many of whom are immigrants, to explore and express their healing journey in artistic ways. It created a space for patients to be together, share, and learn in a nurturing atmosphere. As we were amid a pandemic, Valdez adjusted her workshops to function in digital space. Patients, youth, and the artist began their work together by exploring the topic of healing. What images, words, people, and foods bring comfort and aid healing? What inspires and brings hope? They created collages, mandalas, poems, and personal prayer flags to foster peace, compassion, strength, delight, and wonder and to spread goodwill. They also recorded individual stories of healing journeys and combined them with home and family photos, favorite landscapes, and sentimental images into the project’s video documentation.

The artist produced a final book in place of the public exhibition that she could not share with the public due to COVID-19.

Nora Valdez is a born and raised Argentinian and Boston-based artist who has been working and exhibiting for thirty years. Since the beginning of her practice, Valdez has used sculpture and installations to create images that reflect on the nature of change, the life of the individual, and the natural or societal forces that buffet our souls. Most recently, her focus has been on the nature of home, the immigrant experience, and roots/rootlessness. In 2020, she was a recipient of the NEFA Creative City grant for her project We Heal. She was also a finalist for the public art to commemorate the 19th amendment centennial in Cambridge, MA.