he said, "I've never heard of anyone so excited to find cancer cells."

The two types of tissue I'll soon be growing in the lab at Concordia are very similar: SAOS-2 and U-2 OS. It was Dr Andrew Pelling who first brought the SAOS-2 type to my attention, and Dr Michael Sacher (the director of the tissue culture lab at Concordia) who introduced me to U-2 OS.

William Gale Gedney, Two girls with dirty clothes holding hands, 1964.

SAOS-2 and U-2 OS are both osteosarcoma cells, meaning bone cancer. They have an interesting relationship to each other in that both cell lines were extracted from young Caucasian females, ages 11 and 15, respectively. Our 11-year old girl's bone cancer was sampled and stored in the lab in 1973, while the 15-year old was parted with some of hers approximately a decade earlier, in 1964. The U-2 OS came from her shinbone. There is no more personal information available about these girls, for obvious reasons of confidentiality.

Tracing the origins (and in this case, the osteobiography) of the materials used liberally in the laboratory environment might for a moment return some of the missing identity and agency to the remaining microorganisms that were once associated with these young ladies. We might experience empathy for them. In effect, I will be growing new pieces of the cellular remains of these girls. But, how much of us is actually present in our pathologies? Are we separate from them, in terms of who we really are? Is there a danger in identifying with our diseases? Should we maintain a distinct psychological separation from corporeal intruders in order to prevent them from infecting our psyches, too? If that is the case, then what of us is actually us? How much are these cells, cultured for decades, passing through their own life cycles and mitosis x a million, still connected to the humans they came from?

If I name the osteosarcoma samples by human names, since they originated in human girls, what will happen? SAOS-2 will be named Sonya and U-2 OS will be named Osanna. Sonya and Osanna most likely would never have met, yet are immortalized in relation to each other through laboratory experimentation and their tireless cellular division into infinite daughters of themselves. What is my reason for making the acquaintance of Sonya and Osanna? It is entirely practical and material: because I plan to create mineralized semi-living bone sculptures, and bone cancer is the fastest growing bone (not to mention, hardy). Normal bone takes a very, very long time.

What happens when human cancer is played with in an artistic context? Does this trivialize the enormous human emotional impact of the devastation of cancer on families? While that is certainly not my intention, I can understand where some feeling of outrage might emerge from this. We have shared social codes around death and loss and mourning. Humans maintain stringent ritual requirements for preserving the dignity of the deceased. And, culturally, cancer is still a terrifying, nightmarish beast.

What if artworks around or with beastly cancer humanizes what is otherwise a terror in the collective cultural imagination? Or, what if creative experimentation leads to a helpful discovery about the nature of these particular cancer cells, one that ordinary scientific protocols might otherwise overlook? What contribution might an artist make to the understanding of cancer?

I take a minor risk in exposing myself to these cell types when I work with them. However, to shed some light on laboratory work with human matter, it's important to understand and acknowledge that the first tissue culture ever achieved in a laboratory was done using human female cervical cancer cells (HeLa) and that they are still used, decades later, in most laboratory tissue culture experiments around the world. My colleague and artist friend, Tristan Matheson, has worked throughout his graduate degree on HeLa cells, the culture of cancer and its affects, meaning, implications. This work will be shown during our collaborative exhibition in November.

Henrietta Lacks.

Henrietta Lacks (HeLa) unwittingly donated a malignant cervical tumor tissue sample on her deathbed, without having ever given consent. It was simply taken, probed, used. Given the gendered and sexual nature of the specimen, would this incident qualify as a form of medical rape? Or does the good that came from the use of her stolen cells, for arguably all of humanity, justify the means? Henrietta's family fought for generations to have the erasure of her identity and unethical sourcing of her materia brought to light, and to have her recognized for her many silent contributions to science. Did factors such as race, economic status and gender contribute to the desire for the erasure (and scientific encoding) of her identity? For more information on the story of HeLa cells, check out this link and this link. There's also now an entire book written about it.

I will be working with the SAOS-2 and U-2 OS cell lines from the frozen stock in Dr Sacher's lab beginning as early as next week, if my specialized nutrient media arrives from the supplier by then. The downside to working with these cells? Sonya and Osanna are hungrier and more robust than most cell lines, meaning I might have to spend much more time and money keeping them fed while they grow into the carefully designed, beautiful bio-art objects I envision them becoming.