Keep A Breast × Bulle Derouette: Art for Breast Cancer Awareness Month

2. What role does art play in your work today?

Keep A Breast: Art is not simply a communication tool for Keep A Breast: it is the foundation of our identity, at the heart of our vision and the common thread running through everything we do. It guides our development, the way we approach prevention, how we address health issues and how we reach very different audiences. Since our creation, we have used art as a way to raise awareness about breast cancer prevention. Every project we undertake is shaped by this artistic approach.

Keeping this artistic vision at the heart of what we do pushes us to remain open and curious, and to constantly explore new perspectives. Through art, we can address sensitive topics such as cancer, our relationship with the body and women's health in a way that is thoughtful, engaging and accessible. Art allows us to move beyond the traditional codes of health prevention and reach people differently: through emotion, aesthetics and encounters with artworks. It allows us to offer something more universal, more human. This is what sets us apart and what enables us each year to reach some of the 10,000+ people we raise awareness among in France.

3. Your work explores the breast as a central motif. How did this body of work come about, and what draws you to this subject?

Bulle Derouette: I have always been completely fascinated and obsessed with breasts, ever since I was very young. Just as an anecdote, I remember an episode of sleepwalking when I was six, when I found myself wearing my mother’s bra filled with oranges…

My work took a real turn towards more engaged themes around 2012–2014, after a revelation sparked by watching Barbara Miller’s documentary Female Pleasure. From then on, I no longer wanted to make art simply to “make something beautiful”, but to create objects and paintings that have meaning. Historically, in art history, women’s bodies, and breasts in particular, have almost exclusively been represented through the lens of the male gaze, oscillating between erotic idealization, passive objects of desire and symbols of motherhood.

As a female artist, choosing to reclaim this motif serves several purposes for me: reclaiming the narrative around the body and refusing to be simply the object of artistic contemplation, becoming instead the active subject who defines, shows and interprets her own body according to her own truth. The female breast is also a territory saturated with social norms, sexualization and aesthetic pressures. Turning it into an object of visual art allows it to be freed from these constraints, whether by celebrating the diversity of bodies or addressing health and vulnerability.

From a more technical perspective, I create my breast sculptures in different sizes and shapes. I use various glazing techniques: solid glazes, firing with gold, and oxide pencil to permanently inscribe the names of women, feminist writers and artists who inspire me. I also create “patchwork” pieces using coloured clays, as well as textured crystalline glazes. It’s crazy how many different works you can create from such a “simple” body part as the breast, and I love that!

4. Could you tell us about Keep A Breast’s mission? What is the association’s first memory connected to art?

Keep A Breast: It all began in California in the late 1990s, when Shaney Jo Darden, an artist on the Californian street art scene, lost her friend Margaret to breast cancer. This loss became a turning point: Shaney Jo refused to let the disease have the final say and looked for a way to transform that pain into something alive and hopeful.

The idea was born to create plaster casts of women’s busts and entrust them to artists, who would transform them into unique works of art. Each bust became an act of remembrance, prevention and celebration of the female body.

This founding gesture, born from grief but turned towards life and solidarity, is our first memory connected to art. At Keep A Breast, art did not come along to support the mission: it gave birth to it. Ever since, that intuition has remained: what if art could change the way we look at breast cancer?

5. You created a bust that you are donating to the association. How did you approach the subject while staying true to your artistic practice?

Bulle Derouette: In my work, I have always explored the female body, intimacy and breasts in all their forms, whether symbolic or inspired by real life.

For this bust, I wanted to address mastectomy without filters, while retaining all the poetry and preciousness that characterize my ceramics. I sculpted the absence of one breast and transformed the scar: I highlighted it with gold, a technique I often use in my firings to enhance details, and delicately softened it, surrounding and intertwining it with ribbons.

For me, it was a way of using my usual visual language, almost like a visual diary, to turn a life challenge and a personal struggle into a strong, beautiful and resilient piece, while remaining rooted in my commitment to celebrating women’s bodies in all their truths.

6. How would you describe your approach to creativity and what guides your artistic choices?

Keep A Breast: At Keep A Breast, creativity is a collective process. Our artistic approach is based on a founding principle: creating plaster casts of women’s busts, which are then entrusted to artists who transform them into unique works of art. This process is at the heart of everything we do. It creates a meeting point between a body, an artist and a prevention message.

We are fortunate to work with artists from a wide range of backgrounds: painters, sculptors, street artists, illustrators, designers… each bringing their own perspective, sensitivity and artistic world to our cause.

What always guides our artistic choices is their alignment with our mission: raising awareness, celebrating the female body, and conveying a message of hope and solidarity. We look for artists whose work resonates with these values and who want to put their talent towards a project that goes beyond the artwork itself. Diversity of styles is essential: it is what gives our collection its richness and universality.

7. What message would you like to convey to the public through this collaboration during Breast Cancer Awareness Month?

Bulle Derouette: By representing the reality of illness and mastectomy, and choosing to enhance the scar with gold and ribbons, I refuse to confine the body to the stigma of suffering. I want to show that strength, grace and beauty can also be found in transformation and reconstruction.

Addressing mastectomy through ceramics means refusing the pressure for perfection or the smoothing out of women’s bodies. It means affirming that every stage of our lives, every mark and every singularity deserves to be represented, seen and honoured without shame or taboo.

By putting my work in service of this cause, I want to create a space for empathy where the intimate becomes universal. It is a way of telling all women affected that they are not alone, and of transforming a life-changing experience into a strong symbol of support and humanity.

8. What are your plans for the coming months?

Bulle Derouette: I would like to develop my breast sculptures further so that they tell real stories, imagining series that speak more deeply about existence. We are working on this with Galerie Bessaud for 2027!

Keep A Breast: Our ambition for the coming months is clear: to continue creating our artistic busts and expanding this unique and exclusive collection of women’s busts, which is at the heart of our identity. Each new bust is a new voice added to those that, for more than twenty years, have affirmed that women’s bodies deserve to be celebrated, protected and respected.

Over the years, this collection, which now includes nearly 200 works, has come to tell an increasingly powerful story: that of a community of artists and women committed to ensuring that breast cancer is no longer a taboo, that prevention becomes a reflex and that solidarity prevails over illness. We want to continue presenting these works, taking them on the road and sharing them with as many people as possible through exhibitions and events, in France and internationally. We also want to continue our awareness-raising initiatives in the field, which allow us to reach more than 10,000 people in France every year, while keeping art as one of our main ways of reaching people.

Breast cancer will not have the final say. Prevention, creativity and solidarity will continue to grow, bust after bust, artist after artist.

Artworks selection