Tumours Personified is a series of head casts, the artist’s deformed selfportraits.
The work is a testimony of Szapocznikow’s struggle with cancer
and an attempt to come to terms with it, the result of her observation
of the gradual disintegration of her own body. Szapocznikow created
her first facial-cast self-portrait in 1965, then going on to use casts of
various parts of her body and experimenting with new materials, such
as polyester. With time, autobiographical themes came to dominate in
her practice. In the late 1960s, she created the series Bellies, Fetishes,
and Tumours — with photographs embedded in polyester mass — which,
as the disease progressed, found a continuation in the series Great
Tumours, Tumours Stratified, Souvenirs, and finally Tumours Personified.