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VINCENT BARRAS . . . and this causes many problems in hospitals
since everybody brings flowers when visiting a patient, but the first
thing that a nurse will do is store them away in a safe environment
because they may carry microbes. This is quite contradictory
because in many hospitals you will also find a florist; it’s a whole
business and very much related to healthcare institutions. In terms of
all the senses that you mentioned, Charlotte, a hospital really is a
microcosm of the whole world. Smells, colors, and touch are
exacerbated but at the same time also annihilated. If you go to a
hospital and listen, for instance, you can experience it as a huge
factory of sounds of every kind, machines, people, bodies,
interactions, words. It’s a very active sound machine. Then you have
the odors: flowers, but also urine, feces, sweat, and products of
chemistry—all of which smells very strong. This sensory world,
however, is in constant tension with the scope of medicine, which
tries to avoid anything that smells because it could mean that it
carries microbes from the outside world and may thus be dangerous.
This work really plays with the tension between these two worlds.
JILLIAN CROCHET This tension between sensory overload and the
attempt to nullify and/or sanitize in seeking to preserve life really is a
chaotic microcosm of our efforts, and inevitable failure, to escape
disability and death—a natural fate. Even though I reject a purely
medicalized understanding of disability, I still engage with the medical-
industrial complex to try and heal what I can and stave off further
deterioration of my body and muscles. It’s hard to live in the reality of
cognitive dissonance wherein multiple opposing realities are true, but
it’s something disability cannot escape. It is often ignored or denied,
such as the mass denial of the deadly effects of Covid-19. In some
ways it would be much simpler for us all to just wear masks, so we
could protect each other, everyone, but people don’t want to face
what reminds them of their proximity to death and disability.
Therefore, many disabled people have to risk their lives to exist within
society. Böttner’s work reminds me of this complicated coexistence in
which disabled bodies have to exist, wearing masks to be out in the
world and experience pleasure in community, or to do necessary
things like grocery shopping. I also love the dark humor Darling and
Lazard are pointing to in these rituals in hospitals and funerals, often
used in futile attempts to cover up the “gross” smell of death, or to
“beautify” the “ugly.” People often say things like “I brought some
beautiful flowers to ‘liven up’ the place,” but those flowers will
imminently die, and are actually apt metaphors for the cycle of life.
LAURA VALTERIO Another interesting aspect in Böttner’s work
regards the artist’s bodily posture, since this napkin was likely painted
with the mouth, in close proximity with the material. This idea brings
us back to the notion of encountering the artistic material differently,
though from the perspective of the artist. Like in La Rocca’s and
Kahlo’s case, Böttner’s artistic manipulation of a medical device is a
way of asserting ownership and personalizing a standardized tool, by
imbuing it with the traces of lived experience. And as Jillian was
previously saying about flowers as an image of precarity, if we think
about the traditional role of flowers in the pictorial genre of the still life
—which, in Spanish, is called naturaleza muerta—this motif speaks
again to the idea of how closely intertwined the realms of art and
medicine are. In this sense, I find your observation about La Rocca’s
radiographs and the notion of the vanitas really striking, Vincent.
5
Repurposing Medical Materials in Art: The Politics of Discard
and Revaluation
CHARLOTT E MAT T ER To conclude, I want to return to our initial
questioning of the use, reuse, and “misuse” of medical materials in
art, and relate it to the matter of value. The notion of use, which Sara
Ahmed explores so eloquently in her What’s the Use? On the Uses of
Use (2019), is intricately tied to value conceptions. And value, in turn,
has a fraught relation to the history of bodies that have been
considered as useful or not, and accordingly exploited and/or
marginalized. There’s a troubling relation between the use and value
of the materials we have been looking at, and the question of how
certain bodies—sick and disabled bodies, but also more generally
nonnormative bodies—are valued. On the other hand, these works
also open up the possibility to reconsider conceptions of use and
value through strategies of reuse and “misuse.” Picking up on what
Virginia was previously alluding to, when she observed that a sanitary
napkin is an unusual artistic medium, I was thinking about how this
relates to what you, Laura and Vincent, mentioned while discussing
Kahlo’s work and how plaster is an affordable material. Underlying
these observations is the fact that we are dealing with materials that
have a lot of use value but little exchange value, to use Marxian
terms. The question then becomes: How can we think about value
and class relations in terms of materials from the realm of medicine
as they become appropriated in art? Donald Rodney (1988, 33) for
instance was using X-rays as an artistic medium not only because
they held specific meaning to him as a chronically ill artist, but also
because they were affordable and easily accessible. He used to buy
them in bulk, for one British pound per kilogram. As we are looking at
these different works, we might consider material hierarchies, both in
terms of art-historical conventions, but also in relation to the
previously addressed hierarchies of certain bodies and notions of
health. So how can we make sense of the use and value of these
materials?
VINCENT BARRAS I think that’s really the throughline of all these
works. The value of materials can also be very political and crude
because medicine is very expensive. Even the smallest item, like the
napkin, can be very expensive when used in the medical world,
because the production process has to be strictly controlled and
there are huge businesses surrounding all these materials. So when I
see this humble napkin, or when I think about how an artist would buy
kilos of X-rays because they were cheap, I think about how for each
medical material, there are different registers of value. For instance,
the “cheap” masks many of us used during the pandemic actually
represent a billion-dollar industry, with some countries having the
resources to produce them and others not, so some will have to buy
them and some will profit from them. For each material used in these
works of art, there is a whole economy of production behind.
LAURA VALTERIO Then again, the value of these works of art seems
to derive less from the materials themselves and more from the way
in which they are used. Even if certain materials stand for a big
industry, once they are used for medical purposes, they seem to be
somewhat devalued, and eventually they are discarded. Yet, in the
case of the artworks we have discussed, the same medical materials
are reinvested with significance through an artistic intervention which
gives them new meaning. Another throughline in these works is
therefore the potential of reusing and revaluing as a political act.
JILLIAN CROCHET Yes, definitely, insisting that these materials that
make life possible and our disabled bodies are valuable, and
reclaiming them is a political act. As it pertains to value, the disabled
body is often not valued or seen as important and worthy of safety—
as if it were discardable. On the other hand, the medical industry
makes billions of dollars to avoid death and disability. The disabled
body is both devalued in a certain sense, but also very expensive and
profitable, used to turn a huge profit, with extreme price gauging by
insurance companies and medical equipment companies. Our bodies
and these works are beautiful—valuable—because they are fragile,
complicated, and layered.
VIRGINIA M ARANO Through the artistic transformation of medical
objects and spaces into art interventions, we observe a shift both in
their aesthetics and function. In this conversation, we considered the
works of Ketty La Rocca, Frida Kahlo, and Lorenza Böttner, along
with those of Jillian Crochet. These different practices defy normative
categorizations, embodying a radical form of artistic expression that
transcends traditional boundaries. They bring to the forefront
intersectional perspectives on the topic, discussing the role of gender,
disability, and class. Such dialogues between art and medicine, as we
have explored here, open a space for critical engagement with
medicalization practices from the point of view of different
methodologies and highlight the essential role of creative practices in
questioning and expanding our understanding of the material world.
They call for a broader, more inclusive approach to the ways in which
objects, bodies, and spaces are perceived and interacted with.
Through this lens, the intersection of art and medicine becomes a vital
space for reimagining and enriching the concepts of object, function,
and norm, emphasizing the critical need to defy a system that aims to
categorize human experience into normative experiences of health
and illness, ability and disability.
1 In light of the discussed ambiguities between the animal and human
worlds, and the concepts of cleanliness versus contamination, Sunaura
Taylor’s Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation provides a critical
perspective. This text challenges the rigid separations between humans and
animals, and the abled and disabled, advocating for a more inclusive
understanding of interspecies solidarity.
2 On the question of the (in)visibility of industrial contamination, see also
Ofrias (2017).
3 The Museum of Veterinary Anatomy’s (MAVet) Sublime Anatomies
exhibition at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (October 22, 2019 –January
6, 2020), showcased the interplay between art and medicine through
nineteenth-century ceroplastic models, highlighting the detailed anatomical
study within a historical and contemporary dialogue.
4 For an excellent study of the cultural history of X-rays and the impact of
medical discourse and imaging technologies on twentieth-century
architecture, see Colomina (2019).
5 According to a study published in Nature, approximately one million people
died from the virus in the between February 2020 and May 2022 (Silva,
Goosby, and Reid 2023).
REFERENCES
A
Ahmed, Sara (2019) What’s the Use? On the Uses of Use. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
Ankori, Gannit (2005) “Frida Kahlo: The Fabric of Her Art.” In Frida Kahlo,
edited by Emma Dexter and Tanya Barson. Exhibition catalogue, Tate Modern,
London, June 9 – October 9. London: Westerham Press Limited.
B
Bordo, Susan (1993) Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and
the Body. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Burrus, Christine (2005) “The Life of Frida Kahlo.” In Frida Kahlo, edited
by Emma Dexter and Tanya Barson. Exhibition catalogue, Tate Modern,
London, June 9 – October 9. London: Westerham Press Limited.
C
Chambers, Eddie (2003) “The Art of Donald Rodney.” In Donald Rodney:
Doublethink, edited by Richard Hylton. London: Autograph.
Colomina, Beatriz (2019) X-Ray Architecture. Zurich: Lars Müller
Publishers.
Crochet, Jillian, Carmen Papalia, Whitney Mashburn, and Georgina
Kleege (2022) “Handle with Care: Art and Touch.” Conversation on Zoom,
organized by the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, December
15. https://www.thecjm.org/learn_resources/889 (Accessed: March 10, 2024).
D
Das, Jareh (2019) “Illness as Metaphor: Donald Rodney’s X-Ray
Photographs.” Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, no. 45 (November).
Derrida, Jacques (1981) “Plato’s Pharmacy.” In Dissemination, edited by
Barbara Johnson, 61–171. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
H
Hutchinson, Ishion (2018) “In the Archive: Donald Rodney’s ‘Splash Crowns.’”
Tate Papers, no. 43. https://www.tate.org.uk/tate-etc/issue-43-summer-2018/ar
chive-donald-rodney-sketchbooks-splash-crowns-ishion-hutchinson
(Accessed: March 14, 2024).
K
Kraus, Arnoldo (2010) “Frida Kahlo: das Leben, ein Schmerz.” In Frida Kahlo
Retrospektive. Exhibition catalogue, Martin-Gropius-Bau, April 30–August 9.
Munich: Prestel.
L
La Rocca, Ketty (1974) “You, You.” In Il corpo come linguaggio: La “Body-art”
e storie simili, edited by Lea Vergine, bilingual text. Milan: Giampaolo Prearo
Editore.
Leoty, Ernest (1893) Le Corset à travers les Âges. Paris: Paul Ollendorff.
Liboiron, Max (2021) Pollution Is Colonialism. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press.
M
Marano, Virginia, Charlotte Matter, and Laura Valterio (2024) “Bodily Matter
and Complex Embodiment in the Art of Donald Rodney.” RACAR: Revue d’art
canadienne / Canadian Art Review, special issue “Cripping Visual Cultures,”
no. 2 (Fall).
McFadden, Elizabeth (2024) “Revealing the Iron Corset.” Wellcome
Collection. See at: https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/X8eq-xIAACUAjiaN
(Accessed: March 13, 2024).
O
Ofrias, Lindsay (2017) “Invisible Harms, Invisible Profits: A Theory of the
Incentive to Contaminate.” Culture, Theory and Critique 58, no. 4: 435– 56.
P
Preciado, Paul B., ed. (2023) Lorenza Böttner: Requiem for the Norm.
Leipzig: Spector Books.
R
Rodney, Donald (1988) Sketchbook No. 14. Page 33. Tate Archive, London.
S
Silva, S., E. Goosby, E. and M. J. A. Reid (2023) “Assessing the Impact of
One Million -19 Deaths in America: Economic and Life Expectancy
Losses.” Scientific Reports 13, 3065.
T
Taylor, Sunaura (2017) Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation.
New York: The New Press.
EBSCOhost: eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) printed on 12/28/2025 12:59:26 PM UTC via
HERZEN STATE PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY OF RUSSIA. All use subject to
https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use.
Building Blocks of the Spectrum
Jacob van der Beugel and Lara Keuck
This chapter takes the shape of a dialogue between the artist Jacob
van der Beugel () and the historian and philosopher of medicine
Lara Keuck (). They discuss how ’s artworks engage with
medical knowledge about health and disease and can be put in
conversation with critical reflections about the conditions and
assumptions of biomedicine. The point of departure of their
conversation is ’s mural Matter in Grey (2018), which reflects
contemporary research into the gradual course of Alzheimer’s
disease from protein aggregation to death. This work is used to
explore the ways in which we can question the aesthetic and
epistemological appeal of the continuum and gradualist approaches to
health and disease: Why is a spectrum so convincing? When do
aesthetic metaphors break down? How can their making and
disruption highlight inadequacies and disconnects between realities
and aspirations? And what are the similarities and differences in the
epistemic situations of scientists, humanities scholars, and artists?
Accordingly, the contribution draws on two meanings of the term
“converse”: first, as the dialogue between the two authors, and
second, as the transposition or shape-shifting of one form of
reflecting knowledge into another, in this case between art and
history and philosophy of medicine. The process of creating this
edited conversation shows not only similarities to academic practices
of writing and revising, but also to ’s artistic practices of
prototyping, mixing materials, creating agglomerated blocks of
concrete with diverse insertions of other (recycled) materials, cutting,
polishing, and arranging them as a mural.
The resulting text is thus structured in five sections that individually
zoom in on particular aspects of building and inquiring into a
spectrum: (1) imaginations of the gradual course from health to
disease; (2) the artificiality of the spectrum; (3) backgrounding and
foregrounding; (4) polishing the aesthetic, polishing the concrete; and
(5) art as a mode of inquiry. When looked at as a whole, the sections
—and the open questions—create room for thought about the
1
possibilities, conditions, and limitations of depicting health and
disease along a spectrum.
1
Imaginations of the Gradual Course from Health to Disease
LK Your work Matter in Grey reflects the gradual change in
appearance of the brains of people with progressive Alzheimer’s
disease. Can you say a bit more about the context of the work, and
why you came up with this piece of art?
FIG. 1 Jacob van der Beugel, Matter in Grey, 2018, self-healing concrete,
ceramics, and mixed recycled aggregates, 10 × 2.5 m. Chemistry of Health
Department, Cambridge University, UK. Photo: Paul Riddle
JVDB I was tasked to create a piece for the Cambridge Chemistry
of Health Department, which specifically researches
neurodegenerative diseases. I spoke to one of the lead researchers,
Prof. Michele Vendruscolo. We discussed many facets of his work
over the ensuing weeks so I could get a broader insight into the
purpose of the building and the department’s general ethos. And he
explained to me that there’s a common public misperception that
Alzheimer’s is regarded as a form of aging; that they go hand in hand.
Obviously, it’s slightly more complicated because they are
interrelated. But he wanted to disentangle this notion of Alzheimer’s
so that the public perceive it as a disease that needs to be tackled in
certain ways. My strategy was to split the ambitions of the institute
into four rows of concrete slides of a spectrum or a continuum. The
top row as natural aging, if there is such a thing. And then the second
FIG . 1
2
row as a progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Then the third row is a
progression or a spectrum of treated Alzheimer’s. Finally, the fourth
one is a spectrum of prevented Alzheimer’s, which is ultimately the
main ideological task of the institute.
So, I prized apart the institute in four rows, really. Now whether
that is a realistic way of picking apart an institute, I don’t know. It’s
quite a nice narrative to highlight what happens within the actual
building to a broader audience. Looking back at this approach, it feels
problematic. But interesting to do nonetheless.
LK What do you think of now as problematic?
JVDB I think the more I learn about anything, the more I realize that
you can’t really deconstruct it in that way, in a convincing, ideological
way. However, actually pulling it apart serves a purpose for treating a
disease or making the task of treating and research more
manageable. Maybe for that reason it was a good way of dealing
with the art commission. But I’m not sure how I would go about doing
it now, to be honest. Maybe the naivety was good.
LK Well, the interesting thing about art is that, even if it’s a
commissioned piece of art, you can always read different things into
it, right? The description that you’re giving now is that the piece of art
does not depict the natural reality of what Alzheimer’s disease is,
what aging is, what prevention, and what treatment means. Saying
that it represents the ideology that drives the research at this institute
is giving a different kind of perspective. I don’t mean that cynically. I
just think that it is important to reflect on the ways in which the
conditions and limitations of biomedical research methods shape our
knowledge about disease. It is important to make visible that
scientific knowledge is conditional and mediated. In this respect, you
could say that you have been taking the presentations of the theory of
disease by these researchers quite literally, and worked with their
metaphors and translated them into working materials for your work
of art.
I am stressing that this is not cynical, because I am convinced that
this reflective mode is an important epistemic practice and in fact not
unknown to medical researchers themselves. To give an example
from my historical research: the neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer,
after whom Alzheimer’s disease was later named, taught his students
in the early 1900s that “many examinations have dealt with
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