First it was an art show, then it was a virtual art show and now? It's about to become a feature length documentary - about cancer! As told by her grieving son Alex, Deconstruction brings to life moments from Joyce Mallonee's cancer journey through artwork and highlights the coping mechanisms she employed to retain her sense of self in a darkly humorous fashion.

 

Cancer literally surrounds us yet is rarely discussed openly. Deconstruction aims to break down barriers preventing survivors, loved ones, and society-at-large from frankly talking about the disease. We are cancer survivors and loved ones harnessing the power of art and humor to soothe and connect.

 

Joyce Mallonee lived with breast cancer for twenty-five years. During fourteen of those years, Stage IV cancer metastasized to her bones, liver, and lungs. She endured continuous cycles of medications, treatments and surgeries that resulted in a body part removed, replaced, or irrevocably altered. Despite the decades-long ordeal, Joyce’s spirit and sense of self remained intact. 

To cope with these physical and psychological incursions, Joyce imagined herself laid out on a canvas with all of her alterations visible: artificial hips, dual mastectomies, the rare vertebroplasty that pumped bone cement into her spine. Over time, this mental exercise evolved into a real-life conceptual art installation she would create to share her experience of her body’s deconstruction.

 

 

As her cancer waged its variable war, Joyce at times felt alienated from her friends and family - most of whom acknowledged her disease abstractly but almost never in frank conversation. Joyce knew that people’s perceptions of cancer as medical fact rather than emotional reality arose from fears of mortality. She believed art could empower cancer survivors to tell their stories through creative expression and open a portal to difficult but crucial conversations with loved ones about cancer, death, and loss.

Despite having studied art in college, Joyce wasn’t confident in her artistic ability or public interest in seeing an art show about cancer. It was only after mentioning Deconstruction to her son Alex that her musings became a real activity. Flying forward in the face of Joyce’s doubt and Alex’s until-then refusal to confront his feelings about the disease, mother and son decided to pursue the concept. 

 

 

 

Over the last two years of Joyce’s life, the mother-son team collaborated with seven artists to conceptualize eight pieces of art telling the story of cancer’s impact on her body and mind. Though Joyce’s quarter-of-a-century living with cancer - beginning in the mid-90’s through 2020 - forms the narrative’s centerpiece, Deconstruction explores her entire personal history - including her formative pre-cancer years growing up in San Francisco. 

But as 2020 wore on, Joyce and Alex were forced to grapple with tough realities regarding the project. As the COVID-19 virus spread, the decision was made to expand the exhibit and offer a virtual art show to those who would be unable to attend physically - in many cases due to their own battles with cancer. But no difficulty was more perilous or pressing to consider than Joyce’s decision to stop medical treatment in June of 2020, prior to the exhibition’s opening. Four months later, on October 4th, 2020, Joyce Mallonee passed away.

 

 

Alex - with the help of the artists, Joyce’s friends and his family - remains determined to make Joyce’s vision a reality despite losing her. In January 2021, Deconstruction Stage I: The Physical Art Show debuted at the Jennifer Perlmutter Gallery in Lafayette, CA. As Joyce’s indelible spirit and sense of humor burst forth from each piece of art, the exhibit’s five-day run closed on what would have been Joyce’s 70th birthday. Knowing the art show and the process of producing it offers an example of how to engage with loved ones and families going through similar experiences, Alex spent the rest of the year creating a virtual version of the Deconstruction exhibit. 

 

 

Deconstruction Stage II: The Virtual Art Show is a digital art experience that debuted in March 2022 at the website - https://deconstructionart.live/ 

The virtual gallery reimagines the exhibit as an immersive digital timeline tracing Joyce’s cancer journey through eight pieces of artwork. Patrons can navigate this timeline, covering from 1995-2020. and explore each piece of art through short video clips that explain the deeper meaning and artistic process behind them. These videos feature footage of the art captured during the physical exhibition paired with archival footage and photos from Joyce’s life.

Alex is now turning his attention to Deconstruction Stage III: The Documentary. The goal is to create a feature length film that is just as experimental and multi-displinary as the art show. That means combining the archival and verite footage already captured with a variety of animations, dance numbers, and live action docudrama. 

Eventually Alex aims to tour this film and the artwork in a series of community screenings with cancer survivors and their loved ones in Deconstruction Stage IV.With art and creativity serving as a portal to engagement around life with cancer, their mother-son journey is destined to become a conversation - an enlightened and connective path to follow through joy and life that leads for all of us (inevitably) to death.