Last night I got some bad news about a family member. My feisty Southern aunt is the first of my mother's generation to be told by a doctor that she is "terminal." She has been fighting ovarian cancer for a while, but the word "terminal" is new, and to her, it signaled a difference. It also kicked off a divide within the family, some members critiquing her acceptance of the term, saying she's giving up, other members stunned, me, longing to see my own mother and hug her body while it is still here, still healthy.

When I got the news, the Henry Art Gallery was already closed for the day. But I had the strongest immediate desire to go there and sit with Hannah Wilke's Intra-Venus Tapes, a grid of videos on the wall that document the artist's final years in intense, unedited, painful detail. She was dying of cancer. She is seen at all hours and in all conditions.

There are 16 videos, each one two hours long, and they play all at once. Certain segments are very hard to watch, but as if anticipating that, Wilke gives you the ability to simply divert your gaze to another screen, where you take your chances. You may run up against more bleeding and more vomiting, or you may find the artist dancing with a bird on her shoulder, or mugging for you.

Wilke struggled all her life to represent herself freely on camera, and this is her masterwork. She's modeling a form of self-acceptance that isn't easy, peaceful, or calm. It's not transcendent, it's just better than the alternative, one final, clear-eyed sit-in protest against her own coming disappearance. Against "terminal."

I don't know what my aunt could take from this, or even whether she would want to watch it at all. You should check it out, see what you think.