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had lost, so she apparently began to dive into anatomical treatises to
gain the knowledge that she had been denied (Ankori 2005, 34). By
painting the anatomical image of an unborn child on the corset, she
reminds us of the deep gap that exists between anatomical
representations and the lived body, which encompasses pain,
emotions, and the richness of experience. Of course, there is also a
gendered dimension to the corset. After its introduction in the early
modern period (cf. Leoty 1983), this item served both orthopedic and
aesthetic purposes, but it soon became a staple element of women’s
fashion (see McFadden 2024). It flattened the bust and accentuated
the breasts and hips, sculpting the classic hourglass figure that
dictated standards of feminine beauty and sexualized the female body
as a reproductive body (Bordo 1993, 162). Corsets restricted
physical mobility and helped confining female bodies to traditional
gender roles. In a sense they immobilized women socially, evolving
into a symbol of patriarchal oppression (Bordo 1993, 181). The
materiality of Kahlo’s corset is also interesting because plaster was
used for centuries by sculptors to replicate classical statues, helping
to spread Western ideals of physical beauty and health around the
world. As a cheaper alternative to precious white marble, it facilitated
the dissemination of an aesthetic associated with whiteness,
perpetuating constructions of race, hygiene, and physical perfection.
The depiction of the red hammer and sickle expresses Kahlo’s belief
in the power of political principles to liberate bodies from pain and
suffering. This was a core idea for the artist, who also depicted
herself in a painting titled Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick
(1954), where she wears a leather corset and holds the red book of
the Communist Manifesto in her hand. She has let go of her mobility
aids and is held only by the two colossal hands of Marxism, while Karl
Marx’s robust hand strangles the capitalist eagle. Through
this detail, Kahlo aligns herself with the anti-imperialist position of
Mexican nationalism, rejecting a colonial dependence on a North
America perceived as technologically and medically superior. By
painting the red hammer and sickle on her corset, the artist presents
us with a utopian vision of a politics that heals bodies and cares for
them, inviting us to reflect on the intersections of medical and political
support.
FIG . 7
FIG . 8
FIG. 7 Frida Kahlo, Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick (original title: Peace on
Earth So That Marxist Science May Save the Sick and Those Oppressed by
Criminal Yankee Capitalism), 1954, oil on Masonite, 60 × 76 cm, Mexico City,
Museo Frida Kahlo
FIG. 8 Frida Kahlo, plaster corset with fetus, hammer, and sickle, ca. 1950 –1951.
Mexico City, Collection Javier Lumbreras. Courtesy of Artemundi Global Fund
JILLIAN CROCHET Marxism is an interesting lens to think through the
value of the disabled body in capitalism. The collapse of the
healthcare industry today in the is a terrible predicament that is
partly related to Covid-19 and mostly due to capitalism. Over one
million people have died from the virus in the since the beginning
of the pandemic. The practice of wearing masks has been
abandoned at the expense of disabled people, vulnerable people, and
the elderly. Reflecting on Marxism, I am thinking about the value of
taking care of each other and the community—or a kind of collective
equalization in the most idealistic sense of communism. Returning to
the corset painted on by Kahlo, I am struck by how it must have been
5
quite disorienting to be immobilized and painting with a mirror. In a
way, this separates you from your body but also reflects it back to
yourself, in a cycle or act of connection.
LAURA VALTERIO The corset is a medical device that Kahlo would
wear as a personal item, but it is now exhibited in museum spaces.
Though it may not have been initially conceived as a work of art, it is
certainly treated as such now. Given the relevance of display
practices in the history of medicine, how can we think the status of
artifacts that straddle the realms of art and medicine? And what are
the ethical issues at stake in displaying artifacts that bear witness to
personal, lived experiences of illness and hospitalization as art in a
public context?
VINCENT BARRAS When a medical object has been used, it is either
discarded or becomes a cultural object that is given a lot of respect.
At the Institut des humanités en médecine (Institute for Medical
Humanities) in Lausanne, where we collect such items, as well as in
other similar institutions, it is impossible to touch any object without
gloves. Each of them is handled with the utmost care, as if it were an
original and unique artwork. This is because these items, which used
to be plentifully around some decades ago, have all been thrown
away and only a few remain today. Through their preservation, their
status changes; they become a cultural item, gaining high value. I find
it quite amusing how the status of certain objects can change so
drastically over time. My other reaction to Kahlo’s work with plaster,
in relation to Laura’s comment on the use of plaster in art, is that the
material dimension of plaster is also very present in medicine, since it
is still used today—although it is increasingly being replaced by other
plastic materials like resin. The corset painted by Kahlo is made from
plaster, but such devices could also be made with iron and very hard
materials. Importantly, these devices are supposed to correct the
body, so the idea of body normativity is also very present in these
kinds of objects. They become a way to observe how much a society
does or does not accept nonnormative bodies. When you have a
body that does not adhere to the norm, you are expected to conform
with the majority, literally to “fit into the mold” (in French we say
entrer dans le moule). The question of what is considered a “normal”
body, how your body fits into what kind of standards, and when you
are outside of such norms, is very political. When I see this kind of
plaster corset, I thus immediately perceive the political dimension of
the body.
LAURA VALTERIO This is an important aspect that reminds us that
hospitals are also spaces in which bodies are formed. It has been
suggested that the image of the unborn child on the corset may be a
reference not only to Kahlo’s complex reproductive life but also to her
own body. After her accident, she was apparently immobilized in a
hospital for nine months, during which the corset was intended to
shape her body as a sort of maternal uterus (Burrus 2005, 201).
When used in art for reproductive purposes, the mold is also
technically referred to by the term of Latin origin matrix, which means
both “mother” and “womb.” The hollow form of the plaster corset is
an indexical negative trace of the absent body and could be used to
recast its form many times. The notion of normativity addressed by
Vincent also informs the multiplication of certain body images and
types. But Kahlo’s corset seems to explore this reproductivity through
its negation, because the form of the body was not meant to be
replicated, but to stand in as its uniqueness. And I think that the
image of the unborn child connects this dimension to her personal
reproductive experience.
JILLIAN CROCHET Talking about the normative and nonnormative
body, in disability justice we are trying to politically reframe disability
against its misconception as something abnormal: disability is
“normal,” because each body is different. The way that people view
disability as a problem that needs to be solved, or the idea that a
body needs to fit into a standardized, idealized mold, is not helpful.
We need to broaden our perspective to accept that all bodies simply
exist—there are no “good” or “bad” bodies. This shift in thinking
acknowledges the natural diversity among us.
4
Precarious Lines: Images of Death and Decay and Sensory
Perception
VIRGINIA M ARANO Taking this idea further, let us consider another
example of the use of medical materials in art with a work by Lorenza
Böttner (see Preciado 2023). Born in Punta Arenas, Chile, Böttner
lost both arms in an accident at the age of eight. She and her mother
relocated to Germany for treatment, where she was placed in various
rehabilitation centers alongside the so-called thalidomide children, and
where she rejected prosthetics and eventually abandoned “disability
education” to dedicate her time to painting and performance. In 1978,
she was accepted into the Kunsthochschule Kassel (School of Art
and Design Kassel). There, exposed to dance, performance, and
conceptual art, she began a multidisciplinary practice focused on the
experimental construction of self. Her primary media were
performance as well as drawing and painting, which she realized
using her mouth and feet. She graduated in 1984 with a thesis titled
Behindert? (Disabled?). In it, she investigated the notion of disability
and examined the lineage of mouth-and-foot painters, exploring
diverse methodologies of creating art and reflecting on her own
embodied experience. This defies established narratives of art history
as a history of the use of hands, while concurrently redefining visual
codes that constitute a body as human. Böttner’s work articulates a
critique of the construction of disability and the concomitant
processes of de-sexualization, internment, and invisibilization to which
transgender and functionally diverse bodies have been historically
subjected. As the artist approached an untimely death in 1994 due to
-related complications, she drew a bouquet of colorful flowers on
a medical napkin, most likely using her mouth.
FIG . 9
FIG. 9 Lorenza Böttner, Untitled, 1993, markers on a sanitary napkin. Private
collection. Exhibition view Lorenza Böttner: Requiem for the Norm, April 15 –
August 14, 2022, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York. Photo: Virginia Marano
The napkin is made of white plastic with a broad blue strip at the top.
Its surface is textured, adding depth to the simple depiction of the
bouquet—orange leaves, purple ferns, blue starburst petals, a purple
dandelion, green foliage, and stems in shades of yellow-green.
Drawn with felt-tip markers, the colors bleed into the napkin’s fabric.
The juxtaposition of the flowers, symbolizing life and its fleeting
nature, with the backdrop of a sanitary pad—a medium rarely seen in
art—offers a thought-provoking dimension to her exploration of
identity and the body’s materiality.
VINCENT BARRAS I was immediately struck by the material and its
interplay with the drawing. It is an image of flowers, which is a
common motif in art. Then again, the material clearly suggests the
materiality of the hospital or medical world—the world of illness,
health, and recovery. The interplay between these two worlds is very
striking for me. The blue strip is also reminiscent of the surgical mask
we wore during the pandemic. Everybody had to enter into direct
contact with this unfamiliar materiality, putting it onto their nose and
mouth, in close contact to the skin. The materiality of the mask is
something many people are uncomfortable with, because it reminds
them of something artificial—with its plastic material and synthetic,
blue color. Böttner’s work is really interesting in juxtaposing this
artificiality with a representation of flowers, which connote the idea of
nature.
JILLIAN CROCHET The materiality is quite noisy—not in the sense of
its making sound but from my experience of these pads. Then there
are these flowers and the idea of what is natural and unnatural.
Plastic, at this point, may as well be considered natural. At the same
time, the flowers are also a reminder of mortality, given their
seasonal life cycles. It’s interesting what you brought up, Vincent,
because when people see any kind of medical equipment, or a
disabled person in a wheelchair, or something that reminds them of
their own mortality, they are often uncomfortable with that. So people
avoid the “other”—disabled people, especially visually disabled
people—because their presence reminds them of the precarity of
their own life, of death, of illness and all these inevitable things that
our society is trying to avoid.
CHARLOTT E MAT T ER I love how you described this work in auditory
terms, Jillian. I have another immediate sensory response to it, which
concerns the olfactory dimension. On the one hand, this napkin would
typically be used to absorb bodily fluids, such as blood, urine, and
feces, so it would potentially involve a vast array of odors, some of
them conventionally connoted as unpleasant. Then again, the flowers
drawn onto the napkin codify smells that are typically perceived as
pleasant and commercialized as such by the perfume and cleaning
industry. This brings us back to notions of cleanliness and dirt, and all
related value judgments. Böttner’s work thus creates an interesting
tension by evoking supposedly contrasting odors, calling into question
normative conceptions thereof. Which smells do we find pleasant, and
why? Of course, this has to do with personal memories and
experiences, but also with social conventions. Precisely because the
napkin relates to care, it further recalls intimate and embodied
relations to smell. This work also reminds me of two recent works.
One is Jesse Darling’s Untitled (Still Life) (2018 – ongoing), which
consists of fresh flower bouquets enclosed in vitrines that gradually
decay over the course of an exhibition and address the labor of care.
I recently saw this work at the Migros Museum für
Gegenwartskunst in Zurich, but even before, whenever I would only
see pictures of it, the rotting flowers provoked in me this visceral,
olfactory response just by way of an image. The other work I’m
reminded of is Support System (for Tina, Park, and Bob) (2016) by
Carolyn Lazard. For this durational performance, visitors brought a
bouquet of flowers as an entrance fee and in return spent half an hour
with the artist, so the work consisted of shared time, but also of a
kind of evolving sculptural work with bouquets being added.
Flowers are a recurring motif in art, as Vincent previously observed,
but they also relate to the medical world, because they are such a
common presence in hospitals in this very conventionalized way of
showing your care and support to someone.
FIG . 10
FIG . 11
FIG. 10 Jesse Darling, Untitled (Still Life), 2018 – ongoing, flowers, vases, water,
vitrines. Exhibition view Interdependencies: Perspectives on Care and Resilience,
2023 – 2024, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich. Photo: Stefan
Altenburger Photography, Zurich. Courtesy of Jesse Darling and Arcadia Missa,
London
FIG. 11 Carolyn Lazard, Support System (for Park, Tina, and Bob), 2016, 24
gifted bouquets, documentation of performance and collectively produced sculpture,
dimensions variable. Courtesy of Carolyn Lazard
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