Abstract
Since the 1990s, the growing expansion of a vast array of medical technologies for the visualization of the inner body seems to have revamped, in an improved version, the tradition of the anatomical theatre, fuelling not only the question of the relation between inner and outer body, public and private space, visible and invisible objects, but also the problem of the relation between art, science and knowledge. The objective of this article is to shed some light on how contemporary artists engage with the very notion of “knowledge of the inner body” proper of the anatomical tradition. To this aim I briefly summarize some fundamental aspects of such tradition and subsequently examine the work of two artists, Laura Ferguson and Annie Cattrell, as examples of very different approaches to the meaning of the visualization and representation of the inner body in contemporary art.
Highlights
Since the 1990s, the growing expansion of a vast array of medical technologies for the visualization of the inner body seems to have revamped, in an improved version, the tradition of the anatomical theatre, fuelling the question of the relation between inner and outer body, public and private space, visible and invisible objects, and the problem of the relation between art, science and knowledge
Over the years the work with images was complemented with the study of plastic models in order to visualize the dynamics of scoliosis, and eventually Ferguson engaged in direct observation of human cadavers as a resident artist at the New York University Anatomy Lab, where she became familiar with the smallest details of the skeleton and the texture of the bone
Both Ferguson’s and Cattrell’s artistic production stands in the lineage of the Western tradition of the anatomical theatre, where the exhibition of the inner body was at the core of a web of political and social practices, and could refer to multiple meanings
Summary
Since the 1990s, the growing expansion of a vast array of medical technologies for the visualization of the inner body seems to have revamped, in an improved version, the tradition of the anatomical theatre, fuelling the question of the relation between inner and outer body, public and private space, visible and invisible objects, and the problem of the relation between art, science and knowledge. Over the years the work with images was complemented with the study of plastic models in order to visualize the dynamics of scoliosis, and eventually Ferguson engaged in direct observation of human cadavers as a resident artist at the New York University Anatomy Lab, where she became familiar with the smallest details of the skeleton and the texture of the bone Commenting on her attempts to represent her inner body, Ferguson remarks: “It’s an unusual kind of work – not quite like drawing a real thing that you can see, yet not quite like drawing from imagination either: it’s drawing a real thing, but one that you can’t see.”.
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