Grad Spotlight: Michael Gage Costa

Michael Gage Costa, 24, a graduating graphic design BFA student at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, has been in remission from testicular cancer for nearly four years. But the cancer diagnosis, delivered on Halloween 2005 when Costa was a 19-year-old art major at Ithaca College, continues to inform his life and his art.

Costa’s thesis project, on view recently at the Mason Gross Galleries, featured a Wheel of Survival, part of an elaborate game in which viewers step into the role of cancer patient and eventually learn whether they live or die.

And in two striking videos, Costa uses animation and live action to illustrate his struggle and eventual triumph over illness. Set against the backdrop of a suburban home and cul-de-sac, the video shows Costa battling an ominous inky black creature that refuses to die until Costa detonates a bomb and blows the creature to bits.   

The short and snappy videos are pure Costa: playful, hopeful, drenched in black humor.

"Older cancer patients use ribbons, fundraisers, prayer, hope,” says Costa, who grew up in East Brunswick, New Jersey, and now lives in nearby Matawan. “Those things are great. I think humor speaks to young people.”

Of course humor is often born in a bleak place, and Costa’s cancer comics, animations, and games are no exception: By the time Costa was diagnosed, the cancer had reached stage 3. The disease had already metastasized to his abdomen, lymph nodes, and lungs. Eventually, it would spread to his brain. His prognosis: one-in-two.

“Numbers are your universe when you have cancer,” says Costa, who endured two rounds of chemo spanning nine months, during which he lost hair and suffered massive fatigue, among other symptoms. “Those were the most important numbers of my life. That was the scariest part right there: It’s just a ratio.” 

Costa transferred to the Mason Gross School in 2007, and he has mastered the graphic-designer aesthetic: shaved head, sleek specs, a light dusting of facial hair, and the requisite MacBook Pro stashed in his bag. Costa displays a photograph taken three days prior to his diagnosis. The image shows Costa, a handsome young man with a lush head of wavy dark hair, wincing.

“For two months I was in a lot of pain,” Costa remembers. “I went to the chiropractor. The on-campus doctor said, ‘Just ice it.’ ” Costa allows that the symptoms of testicular cancer tend to be “really subtle: tremendous back pain, loss of appetite, fatigue. Sounds like the typical college student.” Still, sometimes Costa considers seeking out that campus doctor. He would inform the doctor that a measly ice pack couldn’t alleviate his back pain.

The brain radiation left Costa nearly bald. He wears hearing aids and suffers ringing in his ears, two results of his treatment. He jokes that he saves a bundle on haircuts and shampoos.

“Having levity has helped me through it,” he says, as has his fiancée, Allison, Costa’s best friend from his days at St. John Vianney Regional High School in Holmdel. “There’s a stigma to talking about it. It deprives cancer of the power it has over me if I can talk about it.”

And blowing cancer to bits, even a pixilated “cancer monster,” carries its own satisfactions.

“It was my way of fighting through art,” he says. “It was really nice for me to make cancer this tangible monster that could be defeated and stomped down.”

By creating this Wheel of Survival for the thesis project, he demystifies the disease and forces the viewer to face off against cancer.

“I’m trying to create frustration in the viewer,” he says, explaining the flight of stairs installed before the Wheel of Survival. Don’t need surgery? Advance one step. Catch a cold that lands you in the hospital for 10 days? Take one step back.

“This is stuff people go through,” says Costa, who spent half a year in the hospital. “It sucks, but there’s also a lot of positive stuff. Hopefully that will resonate. Some people are reluctant to go to that emotional place.”  

But Costa is determined to take them there, with artful humor.

“There was a guy with a better prognosis than me. He didn’t survive,” Costa says. “He had the same doctors, the same meds, the same chemo, and his body just responded differently. I felt survivor’s guilt for that. It’s not fair. I wasn’t…more worthy than he was.”

As a result, he says, “I feel a sense of responsibility to represent people that don’t survive.

“I was afraid when I was sick of not being remembered,” Costa says. “I promised myself I would not forget (John). I knew that if it was me, I wouldn’t want to be forgotten either.”