Curatorial Statement

Welcome to the fifth year of The Body Electric/ Le Corps Électrique (TBE), our annual digital arts show featuring artists working across media, including photography, painting, video, sculpture and digital art forms. TBE is a forum where artists and healthcare practitioners engage creatively and critically with ideas related to health and healing.

This year we asked artists to broadly consider the themes of learning, the environment and healthcare environments in response to the ICRE 2018 theme, The Learning Environment and Residency Education: The Evolution of Training.  As in previous years, the show features the work of professional artists, learners and health care providers from around the world that were selected by a cross-disciplinary jury.

The Body Electric understands art as an intervention that explores, disrupts, deepens and reimagines medicine. Art offers a set of practices for meaning-making, looking, and reflecting through which we can stand in new relations with the subjects and objects of health care.

The conference theme of learning environments calls to mind reflexive questions about the format of the show. The commingling of a traditional conference environment with art is not novel; academic conferences often include entertainment or a keynote session from a different field, and some even have a salon-style room where attendees can view art in a setting that is more like a physical gallery.  But when we imagined the possibilities of this show five years ago, we decided to use a digital format.  This decision was not related to medicine’s at times unbridled technophilia.  The digital platform is an opportunity to increase the accessibility (and hence the scope) of the show since it means that we can reach a broader group of artists who are not required to attend the conference in order to deliver their work. It also means that we can create an archive of art related to health where artists, practitioners, and learners from around the globe can engage with the works as an ongoing community.  Rather than a static archive, we hope that visitors to The Body Electric/ Le Corps Électrique website and digital archive will consider it an active and collaborative space for knowledge production in the dynamic field of arts and/in/with/for health.

In keeping with the non-linear nature of digital environments, the selected works of art in TBE are shown both as still images, but also are animated.  In the words of TBE’s video producer, Erin MacIndoe Sproule: “using animation as a tool allows us to bring the audience deeper inside the pieces, while highlighting details through movement and signally the emotional content of the individual works and their place in the overall show”.

HYBRID & CYBORG ENVIRONMENTS

In the thirty years since Donna Haraway wrote about the promises of monsters and the creative potential of cyborgs to provide new perspectives, hybrid human/machine/animal/technological forms are now so common that they are literally or figuratively invisible. Art, however, has the potential to unveil the wonder, the possibilities and also the potential risks of hybrid species and technologization.  In this show, Laurence Finet describes her photographic prints on x-ray-films as a series that focuses on “the sensuality of cyborg beings,” while Marnie Blair’s creation explores the intersections of the biological and the artificial based on her own experiences with an implanted cardiac defibrillator.  Leah E. Price weaves together craft and technology in Humatrope Collar made from vials of waste from her daughter’s nightly injections.  Shawn Postoff also draws on discarded objects–in this case, a medical textbook–and seeks to “beguile, bedazzle, and bewilder the viewer with otherworldly insights” with FIG 27, an image that depicts a boy transformed by hormone injections. In Shifting Sands, Breagh Cheng highlights the current hybridity of the learning environment in medical education as programs transition from time-based training to competency-based medical education.

EMBODIED & PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENTS

As Karl Lorenzen reminds us in The Other Side, advances in medical science often increase our length and quality of life, changing our experiences of the aging body.  Alexis L. Bulman’s Up-Stack, Down-Stack explores patterns based on the physical movements of her spine while Hana Falconer “objectifies her own body to gain new perspective” in Self-Portrait.  Jack Butler offers a different approach to sensory awareness and embodied learning in Blindfold Drawing.  In Goran, Roberto Santaguida depicts the details of daily life for Goran, an intellectually disabled child, and in so doing demonstrates both the commonality of some human experiences, and the distinct uniqueness of others based on a child’s embodied lived experience.

INTERIOR & MICROSCOPIC ENVIRONMENTS

Numerous works in the show delve into the body’s interiors with seemingly microscopic vision and detail.  Mona Hedayati presents a dramatic oversized capsid protein structure of HIV sitting on a chair and aims to draw attention to “how the fear of contamination is ever-present in our daily lives” through this juxtaposition.  Andrew Ackerman’s Specimen PH764 focuses on a part of the body’s permeable boundary–a section of skin; he draws attention not only to the objectification of bodies through medicine but to the risks of emergent technologies.  Gaetanne S. Sylvester, however, evokes a sense of awe at the complexity of the brain through the striking aesthetics of stem cells, and Ron Wild presents the multisensory experiences of learning pathology through the microscopic collection entitled Pathomap.  Gina L. Jacklin’s multiple works celebrate the critical role of seeds and plant forms for human existence using mosaic-like images that elide the boundaries between art and scientific representation.

WELLNESS & HEALING ENVIRONMENTS

While most of the pieces in this year’s show are connected to healthcare, several of the works explicitly address the nature and qualities of healing environments.   Jenny Chen’s Vessels delves into the body’s interior environment to portray blood vessels; she does so to reveal the human body as an environment that is not solely a physical one, but one that is inhabited by “our minds and spirits”. Her work is a reminder to practitioners to consider the mind, body and spirit in our healing practices. The fragmented figure in Janice Kun’s Refiguring embodies the metaphor of putting oneself back together during the healing process, and the strengthened and renewed self that can emerge from this process. Alana MacDougall depicts drawings of her own Imagined Interiors during her recent treatment for lymphoma and highlights how art can be a tool to visualize learning and healing. Brynley Longman’s beguiling virtual environments recreate either places for healing or spaces of isolation which undermine healing.  Similarly, Justin M. Langille’s photographic series, In the Absence of Safety, records physical landscapes that do not support healing–they are places where drug users were injecting prior to the approval of two new safe injection sites in London, Ontario.  The more sanguine message presented in Guylaine Couture’s collage, Swap to find, exhorts the viewer to engage in a multilateral exchange of ideas with others; this exchange provides a powerful way to help oneself and to heal others.

The creations in the exhibit consider perspectives that rarely emerge in the workshops and presentations of a medical education conference.  We would like to thank the artists for engaging us in thoughtful, affective and critical conversations about the environments where we experience pain, suffering, growth, learning and healing. Find this and previous years’ exhibits on our website at https://thebodyelectric-lecorpselectrique.ca and continue to be part of the community by following us on Twitter @TBE_ICRE and Instagram TBE_ICRE.

Artists

Artist’s Statement

The methodology in my artwork arises from the diagnosis of double curvature Scoliosis which sculpted my body by twisting my spine and granted the experience of living “able-bodied”, with a physical deformity and an invisible disability throughout different phases of my life. The performance and installation art I produce examines the patterns of my physical movement and bodily occupation of space. Through this creative process the experience of invisible disability is translated into visual art.

https://vimeo.com/277386792

Biography

Alexis Bulman is a PEI born artist with a studio practice currently based in Montréal, Québec. Bulman graduated from NSCAD University in 2013 and employs her training by building installation pieces and video works that translate the patterns of her physical movement and bodily occupation of space into visual form. Bulman has exhibited most notably with the Museum of Canadian Art, the Confederation Centre Art Gallery and with Glasgow School of Art, Scotland, UK.

Artist’s Statement

My works bridge between the visual pleasure of art and the rational demands of medical research. The experience of drawing blindfold (in this case in the service of personal grief), moves “learning” into the most personal state of being.

Biography

Having exhibited internationally for over sixty years, including forty years as a published researcher in human development, I am included in public collections, including the National Gallery of Canada.  Fatemaps.ca

Artist’s Statement

My work uses eclectic symbols to create stories about the contrasting fragility and resilience of the human condition. From the vantage point of having personally struggled with a long-term mental illness, I have been acutely observant of the prevailing vulnerability to our suffering that ultimately gives way to death. As a necessary means of redemption, my creative approach hazily mirrors the historic process of grasping for iconic symbols as an attempt to delineate meaning from void. Vessels looks at the human body as an environment in which our minds and spirits inhabits. A subconscious and meditative process takes over to finalize the work on paper through the consideration of repetition, proximity, opacity, and colour. http://jennychen.me/

BREAGH CHENG   
Canada
Shifting Sands

Artist’s Statement

My painting shows the current transition between time-based and competency-based learning. On the left, the figure running on the wheel emphasizes one education model that emphasizes skills gained through experience. As time passes, competency-based education emerges as an alternative model through peer feedback and observation. The focus of learning shifts to a more individualized approach, with different levels of mastery displayed by the three figures. It is up to the audience to decide.

Biography

Breagh is a global health researcher who grew up with a love for art. Through bold colours and varying texture and mediums, including highlighters, crayons, acrylic, pencil crayons and coffee, Breagh demonstrates it is possible to create the extraordinary with the ordinary. As the recipient of a Forward with Integrity grant, Breagh created a participatory film combining theatre and multimedia techniques. She has created multiple short films and photographs architecture in her spare time.

Artist’s Statement

This piece is about an exchange, exchange experience, knowledge, research to find new ways to help people. Any level or area of experience could help the ensemble. To swap is a way to learn, no matter what level of knowledge we have, exchanging allows us to enrich the world, so we need to be attentive at all times. This is what I try to express in this collage.

Biography

Guylaine Couture creates artist books, makes prints and draws. Each of her work is a conversation where content and container merge to make the message more impactful. Her work revolve around themes that affect her: feminism, ecology, mourning, migration, etc. She regularly participates in exhibitions in various countries, and her work were acquired by national and university libraries in Europe, the United States and Quebec. www.gycouture.com

Artist’s Statement

Central to my practice is the act of unraveling, separating, and laying out pieces of what we commonly accept as fact. Specifically, I find myself drawn to self portrait as subject matter. By disassociating with and objectifying my own body, it is possible to gain new perspectives about who we are. In my work, I like to call attention to ‘taboo’ topics. In this silk screen print specifically, I hope to call attention to the uniformity of humanity. We so often make surface judgments based upon superficial differences among us, when essentially we’re all just the same. What we each call our ‘self’ is all just the same skin, bone, and flesh as everyone else.

Artist’s Statement

“C Y B O R G I Z A T I O N”: This digital print is part of a series focusing on the sensuality of cyborg beings. Increasingly, we become disconnected to nature and more dependent on technology. Technology is turning into a part of us; we become technology which changes our physiology. Inspired from images of human x-rays, “Taking position” symbolizes the cyborg being affirming its existence. “Echarde” symbolizes the cyborg being wounded and thus experiencing a human emotion.

Biography

Laurence Finet (Mons, Belgium, 1976) graduated in the Fine Arts Diploma program from the Ottawa School of Art, June 2018. In 2014, she decided to concentrate on the development of her artistic practice. She has participated in various group and solo exhibitions. Her work has been recognized by several awards of excellence including scholarships from the Ottawa School of Art along with prizes outside of the school.

Artist’s Statement

In this work, the HIV capsid protein structure which protects the RNA of the virus and delivers it to the cells when it infects the host is 3D printed in red to convey the alarming situation of those living with the virus and those yet to be infected. It is then allegorically positioned on a king chair to raise awareness on how the fear of contamination is ever-present in our daily lives. Ultimately, the answer both to slowing down the spread of the virus and to help those struggling, lies within education both on the social level and within the healthcare environment.

Biography

Mona Hedayati is an Iranian interdisciplinary artist who immigrated to Canada in 2014 and has exhibited in Iran, Europe and Canada. In her recent body of work, she explores the systems of power and questions the notion of gaze and sociopolitical circumstances under which certain groups are subject to surveillance, HIV infection being one of them. Since the discovery, the basic rights of those living with the virus have been breached on an ongoing basis and despite global education programs, the discrimination has not been neutralized.

Artist’s Statement

My work strives to manifest a sense of ethereality and mystery while being grounded in the familiar and scientific. I am interested in exploring various aspects of biological life from both a scientific and a theological perspective. In the context of this year’s theme of the environment, my seed series works celebrate the structure and power of seeds to sustain human civilizations with their unique ability to survive long periods in dry, barren environments.

Biography

Gina Duque is a visual artist and graduate from Western University in London, Ontario. Originally from Cali, Colombia, she immigrated to Canada with her mother at the age of 11. Gina resides in Guelph, Ontario where she works from her home based studio.

Artist’s Statement

My mixed media piece is an abstracted interpretation of the healing environment and the healing process. The road to healing is a process where one loses the self completely, a form of stripping down to one’s core and baring one’s vulnerabilities. But more importantly it’s a remaking or reanimating of one’s spirit. This cobbled version of a fragmented body fused with a strengthened spiritual self is the exploration of this piece.

Biography

Janice Kun is an illustrator whose work is a distinctive multi-media blend of drawing, collage, digital and photographic elements. These organic constructions reflect the dynamic energy of nature, together with the lyricism of music and found street art. Her approach has created lush and tactile illustrations for magazine editorials, postage stamps, book covers, and advertising campaigns. Janice is based in Toronto, with roots that dig down into the Maritime provinces, and abroad to south east China. i2iart.com/janice-kun

Artist’s Statement

My photographs document relationships between people and the environment in Canada, especially the vital structures of food, water and shelter. In the Absence of Safety records places where substance users injected drugs before the May 2018 approval of two safe injection sites in London, Ontario. These images underscore the dire need for such services, but they also question whether health care professionals should support people in marginal places that they have made for themselves.

Biography

Justin Langille is a documentary photographer based in Guelph, Ontario. Informed by anthropology and his experience as an outreach worker supporting marginalized people in communities to access health and housing services, his work records the relationships that people negotiate with their regional environments to sustain their livelihoods in Canada. His images have previously been featured by the CONTACT Photography Festival, the Magenta Foundation, Vancouver’s Capture Photography Festival, The Walrus, Masionneuve Magazine and others.

Artist’s Statement

This work was created with help from a grant by the Ontario Arts Council.  It is about a girl, Kumiko, who was injured in a car accident (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTxT8fN0SjI).  Her mind is put into a virtual space until her body is healed.  While in a coma she can communicate with her boyfriend who must subtly encourage her to find the symbolic “exit” sign which will bring her out of the coma.  She must decide if she prefers reality or the virtual space. All my work for the last 11 years have been one long narrative with various characters.  This character is named Juniper and she has been in different stories over the years in the virtual space (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urmhu0jAZD8).  She is a girl who hides beneath her blanket wanting someone to come inside, it symbolizes a type of alienation and isolation some feel within the various types of social media. Commissioned by the United States military, I built a virtual environment with features that helped soldiers with PTSD to heal.  While my career is as an artist, those skills were requested in order to help build a healing environment (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGP21NJYtyA).

Biography

I have exhibited in various formats such as Nuit Blanche, the World Expo in Shanghai (Madrid Pavilion), with IBM, in movies such as “My avatar and me” or Art21. I exhibit at various Universities worldwide and am also on the syllabus to many.

Currently Bryn is the subject of three Thesis works (http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/1031/) and has  received three New Media grants (2011, 2014 and 2016) for artists from the Canadian Government (Ontario Arts Council). Bryn was written about in Vogue magazine (Italy) and exhibited at a museum in Rome as well as the Santa Fe new media festival.

Recently worked with Peter Greenaway on Danse Macabre an installation in Basel, Switzerland and with Peter Greenaway and Saskia Boddeke on a show in Moscow’s red square and “Obedience” at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. http://www.brynleylongman.com

Artist’s Statement

These still-life watercolor paintings, that include objects of decoration and festivity, illustrate that with advancements in education and research, state-of-the-art diagnostic and treatment products, and access to affordable healthcare, we can “celebrate” an increased length and quality of life.

Biography

Karl Lorenzen is a professional artist who exhibits and teaches at cultural, educational, health and holistic centers in New York. His artwork is featured in the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics, and was included in exhibitions at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the United Nations Headquarters.

Artist’s Statement

As a patient recently treated for lymphoma, an important aspect of understanding my condition was being able to visualize the internal forms. Throughout my treatment, my condition was described to me by various medical professionals but despite describing the same condition, the descriptions varied greatly. I began creating drawings that represented the interior mass I imagined. I used the drawings, and eventually sculpture, as a feedback system to demonstrate my understanding (or lack there of) and express curiosity.

Biography

I am an artist and educator and hold a Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of Manitoba and a Master of Fine Art from the Pratt Institute on Brooklyn, New York. alanamacdougall.com.

Artist’s Statement

I combine glass, tile, stone, metals, sparkly things, computer parts, and ephemera to create whimsical depictions of Optimythic uselessness. I seek to beguile, bedazzle, and bewilder my viewers with strange and otherworldly insights. This particular piece was hatched from the pages of a discarded medical textbook. I discovered within it “FIG 27,” depicting a stoic fairy-boy who, after eleven and one half months of treatment with 56,570 rat-units of concentrated effort, finally sprouted wings.

Biography

Shawn Postoff is a trans-media artist who dislikes needles, grows queasy at the sight of blood, and still has his tonsils. He blushes when his doctor says, “Cough.” He uses theatrical clown, cinema, fine art, and text to create networked narratives of cross-pollinated meaning. His Web-spinning practice converges on the Internet, where he builds hyperlinked, intra-metaphorical spaces that depict reasonable hand-drawn facsimiles of his uncommon, interior world. www.shawnpostoff.com

Artist’s Statement

Fascinated by the story our trash tells, I weave waste into a dialogue on sustainability and living with special needs. Humatrope Collar is made from the waste of my daughter’s nightly injections – alcohol swabs and needle caps held together by embroidered words of love – and is a protest against Human Growth Hormone not being indicated in Canada for Prader-Willi syndrome, as well as a vehicle for promoting awareness of this rare disease.

Biography

A graduate of the Vancouver Master Recycler Program, I hold a Bachelor of Education, a Fashion Arts certificate, and the privilege of many years training under couturier, Blossom Jenab.

Artist’s Statement

Goran is intellectually disabled. He has trouble speaking and does not understand English. With a tape recorder and translator on hand, I met with Goran three times a week. I asked him to tell me about what made him feel alive, if only in glimpses. He offered me a window into his intimate life, the myriad struggles of his everyday. We explored friendships, dreams, heroes, and the greater hope of living as a regular citizen despite his differences.  By inviting us into the details of his daily existence, Goran showed us he is no different than anyone else. The documentary, which began as an audio recording, soon became a depiction of what is required of a person to survive in our modern world.

Biography

Since completing his studies in film production at Concordia University, Roberto Santaguida’s films and videos have been shown at more than 250 international festivals, including CPH: DOX, Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (Denmark), Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil (Brazil), transmediale (Germany) and the Festival international du film Entrevues Belfort (France).  Roberto is the recipient of the K.M. Hunter Artist Award and a fellowship from Akademie Schloss Solitude in Germany.

Artist’s Statement

The memory of seeing stem cells in a Petrie dish, the universal importance of the circle, the magnified image of a stem cell, neurological pathways protected by myelin are but a few components guiding the design. For me amplified images of lace resemble the helix. Every stitch depends on another stitch just like the neurological pathways of the brain.  My work is intuitive, developing and progressing as I work, starting with drawings, and/or a pattern as a guide. With Beneath the Sheathe, I learned about the complexity and the power of the brain, the human computer, steering the mind, body and spirit.

Biography

After graduating from University of Waterloo with a BFA in 1990, Gaetanne has been working primarily in ceramics, digital prints and mixed media installations, exhibiting locally, nationally, and internationally in solo, group and juried exhibitions. Most recently she participated in the Manitoba Craft/Neuroscience Project, Neurocraft, shown at the John Buhler Research Atrium, Winnipeg and the Voice Gallery in Montreal, and Manitoba Craft Gallery, C2Craft Centre, Winnipeg, curated by Seema Goel. www.gaetannesylvester.com

Artist’s Statement
PathoMap’ was produced using biopsy imagery from Mt.Sinai Hospital in Toronto to investigate different ways to recognize color, shape, and pattern. Medical students are able to zoom into the online artwork through a Google Map-like interface; http://gigapan.com/galleries/823/gigapans/169712

Biography
Ron Wild is a Digital Art/Science Collaborator developing innovative artworks with knowledge domain experts around the world. His signature ‘smART Map’ collages incorporate the very technical knowledge of medical researchers, scientists, and mathematicians.http://www.gigapan.com/profiles/mrowade/gigapans