"Substance of Venom" Video installation for CURRENTS New Media Festival, Santa Fe, NM, 2022. Video projections on applewood and silk. (Photos from artist studio & Gallery 826, Santa Fe)

The gardens, prairies, orchard, woodlands in the home environment 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 and often ineffectual treatments – some that have not changed for decades. 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. In the video installation by the same name, the video is projected onto silk scrims that hang in a sculptural installation constructed of applewood from a Midwest organic apple orhcard.