Substance of Venom
The home gardens, prairies, orchard, woodlands where the artist, Cherie Sampson, lives set the mise-en-scène for a series of self-administered honeybee “stinging rituals” over a period of several months in 2021. A team of Australian researchers recently discovered that the active substance in honeybee venom, melittin, has demonstrated a capacity to induce cell death in two types of aggressive breast cancers: triple-negative and HER2. As a survivor of TNBC, Sampson engaged this symbolic act, calling attention to the need for more natural or other forms of cancer therapy that may one day offer alternatives to toxic treatments. Footage of the foraging patterns of honeybees and other native pollinators of the Midwest that illustrate the diverse life in healthy ecosystems are juxtaposed with images of the stinging rites.
Cherie Sampson has worked for thirty years as an interdisciplinary artist in environmental performance, sculpture, video art and dance. She has exhibited internationally in art-in-nature symposia, video/film screenings and exhibitions in many countries, with site-based solo performances presented in the U.S., Finland, Norway, Cuba, Spain, South Korea and in the Netherlands (in a performance attended by the Dutch Queen in 2003). In 2018, the Pori Museum of Art in Pori, Finland acquired photographic and video documentation of Sampson’s site-based installations and performances created over a 20-year period in Finland for their permanent collection. Recent exhibitions and public presentations include “The Quality of Being Fleeting” at the Currents 826 Gallery for the Currents New Media Festival 2022 in Santa Fe and the theatrical reading of “every.single.one,” one of the featured full-length plays for the 2022 Mizzou New Play Series. Her current performance work depicts an experience with hereditary breast cancer exploring topics of science, genetics and integrative healing from a patient’s perspective of modern medicine. An upcoming solo exhibition is in the planning for the Smith Center for Healing & the Arts in Washington D.C. in the summer of 2023. In addition to her creative work, Sampson serves as a patient advocate in several organizations: the Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO), Facing Our Risk Empowered (FORCE) and the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (BCRP).
Professor Sampson is the recipient of many grants including two Fulbright Fellowships, a Finnish Cultural Foundation Grant, multiple university research and the recent Arts & Humanities Creative Works Fellowship from the Office of the Provost. Sampson is a Professor in the School of Visual Studies at the University of Missouri, teaching in the Art and Digital Storytelling programs. She divides her time between her academic and artistic life and the organic farm where she lives, a site for many of her works. She received her MFA degree in Intermedia & Video Art (with a minor in Sculpture) from the University of Iowa in 1997.