Luci: The Girl with Four Hearts by Katina Bitsicas and Luci Cook tells Luci’s story, a recipient of three heart transplants, at ages 11, 23, and 28. Luci has now graduated college and is pursuing their PhD. They have a fear of wasting time since they are not a candidate for a fourth heart transplant. Conversation about the trauma and PTSD involved with transplants is seen as taboo, and they have been told numerous times that they should just be grateful to be alive. Artist Katina Bitsicas formed a collaboration with Luci to provide them the ability to reclaim their traumatizing hospital experiences and share their journey with others. This artist book is created from a combination of Luci’s large archive of videos, photographs, writings and drawings documenting their medical journey and the sculptural, video, installation, and photographic based works Katina created visually interpreting different parts of their story. The project integrates all of these pieces of their story into one cohesive narrative, including their childhood Make a Wish trip, DIY punk days, body suspension, BDSM, cam-work, traveling and of course the multiple hospital stays. The book is divided into four sections, one for each of the hearts that have lived inside of their body.

Katina Bitsicas is a new media artist who utilizes video, photography, and performance in her artworks to explore grief, loss, trauma and memory. She has exhibited worldwide, including The Armory Show, PULSE Art Fair, Satellite Art Fair, Superchief Gallery NFT, the Wheaton Biennial curated by Legacy Russell, CADAF: Digital Art Month Paris, Torrance Art Museum, HereArt in New York, Art in Odd Places in Orlando, Digital Graffiti Festival, and the St. Louis International Film Festival. She received her BA from Kalamazoo College, Post-Bacc from SACI in Florence, Italy, and MFA from the University of South Florida. She is an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Digital Storytelling at the University of Missouri, where she also conducts research with the MU School of Medicine on utilizing digital storytelling as a meaning-making intervention for bereaved family members. This collaborative research has been published in Death Studies, OMEGA: Journal of Death and Dying, and the Journal of Social Work in End-Of-Life & Palliative Care.

Luci Cook is a PhD candidate in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. They are an activist scholar whose personal politics and community engagement drives much of their research interests. Their current research focuses on antifascism, nationalism, transnational resistance to state oppression, and their respective aesthetics. Other interests include the works of Peter Weiss, poetry, biopolitics, anti-historicism, and the use of Terror Management Theory to approach questions in historiography and literary studies. Luci earned their B.A. with high honors in German and International Studies (focus European Studies) with a minor in Political Science from the University of Missouri--Columbia.