Digital Anatomical Theater, From Origins: The Dark History of Women’s Healthcare
Digital Media: Virtual Reality Application, Photographs on Silk, 360-Degree Video
2017-2020
The Digital Anatomical Theater, Virtual Reality Installation (Oculus Rift), 2018. This work is designed for interaction in a gallery or museum space. Above is a web accessible preview created using 360-degree photographs and video.
The book Origins: Family Secrets and the [Dark] History of Women's Healthcare includes a foldable VR viewing device (similar to Google Cardboard) with a QR code that enables viewers to watch 360-degree videos from anatomical theaters and early psychiatric hospitals that were important in the history of women's healthcare.
The Digital Anatomical Theater features a series of photographic images on silk shown alongside the Virtual Reality application. The series explores medical spaces from the historical to the contemporary. Early scientific practices for representing the body were carried out in Renaissance anatomical and operating theaters, where public dissections and operations were performed to study the body. This series of work was shot in the earliest anatomical and operating theaters in Europe, former psychiatric hospitals, and in present-day digital anatomical theaters— spaces where visualization technologies are used to view the body, such as MRI machines. The VR work examines the way history reverberates through medical practices and spaces today, questioning medicine’s reliance on technology and the belief that computers do not interfere subjectively.
The Anatomical Theatre of the Archiginnasio at the University of Bologna, Italy. Built in 1638, the carved wooden figures represent famous physicians of ancient times, such as Hippocrates.
Old Operating Theater, London, England. Built in 1822, this operating theatre treated poor women. At the time, the only anesthetizer was Ether. See VR work above for video and history of the theater.
The Anatomical Theatre of Padua, Northern Italy. The first permanent anatomical theatre in the world.
San Clemente Insane Asylum, Isola di San Clemente, is a small island off the coast of Venice, Italy. For centuries, it housed a monastic settlement, and more recently, a psychiatric institution. It is now the site of a luxury hotel. During the mid-19th to late 20th century, thousands of women in Italy were housed in mental institutions because of conditions like postpartum depression, alcoholism, and hysteria.
San Clemente
San Clemente
San Clemente
San Clemente
San Clemente, Italy.
San Servolo, Italy. Formerly a monastery, then a military hospital, it was a psychiatric hospital from the early 19th century until 1978.
La Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, France. Neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, a leading pioneer of clinical neurology, focusing on detailed observation, hypnosis, and photography to study conditions like hysteria and epilepsy.
La Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, France.
Exhibition Images
Gallery of Contemporary Art, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 2019
Yuma Art Center, Yuma, Arizona, 2020
Banff Centre For Arts and Creativity, 2018
Yuma Art Center, Yuma, Arizona, 2020
Yuma Art Center, Yuma, Arizona, 2020
Gallery of Contemporary Art, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 2019
Yuma Art Center, Yuma, Arizona, 2020