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Abstract: Vexed paradox in historic anatomical display – one artist-researcher’s perspective through lived experience

Sarah Scaife, PhD candidate - University of Exeter 

Vexed paradox in historic anatomical display – one artist-researcher’s perspective through lived experience 

In this paper I push at the question of “how extraordinary individuals […] themselves felt about being displayed”. As a one-breasted researcher, may I propose that we look at this question sideways on? This paper responds to historic wax anatomy models displayed in several European museum collections, in the light of my own lived experience of the challenges and benefits of cancer treatment. Anatomical models of human bodies and body parts, made in the name of scientific progress in 18th and 19th century Europe, have grisly underpinnings. Such wax models were at the forefront of research medicine which ultimately benefited many people, but they have a vexed history. Scientific models of an idealised anatomy were created from a composite of multiple human bodies; these bodies were routinely procured in the context of enforced marginalisation or even retribution. Thus, medical knowledge is extracted from the bodies of those who gave no consent. (Reilly, 2021). Today, artists are well placed to look into some of the complex and difficult tensions embedded in historical and contemporary health systems (e.g. Confabulations programme 2021-23). As an artist and practice-based researcher I encountered these life-sized wax anatomical models close-up, through an on-line drawing workshop series in lockdown (Performing Medicine, 2021). My enquiry raised vexed paradoxes inherent in the receiving of life-saving medical treatment as a modern patient, which is based on historic violations of personhood. Making drawings from the models displayed, this time on-screen, offered a means to work with the intense discomfort this brought up. I came to discover unexpected resonance with my own lived experience of cancer treatment. This transdisciplinary paper is situated within practice-based artistic performance scholarship and draws upon art history, Museum Studies and the Medical Humanities.

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