Programme Details:

This talk will examine the artist's book as a case study of working across media in the medical humanities. It will do so by focusing on "Artists' Books and Medical Humanities", a project supported by the Wellcome Trust and the British Academy that brought together artists, patients and health professionals, and established the "Prescriptions: Artists' Books" special collection at the University of Kent (UK). 

Emerging in the twentieth century as a form of intermedia, the artist's book developed a distinct aesthetic as well as political identity, drawing on a range of artistic activities such as creative writing, sculpture, painting, printmaking, and photography. Unlike verbal and literary modes of representing health and illness that have been prioritised in the medical humanities, artists' books offer embodied and multisensory accounts of illness experience, drawing their readers into a more direct participatory experience. Using examples from the Prescriptions collection, this talk will showcase imaginative and authoritative works of illness that transform our understanding of how books, art and healthcare can be interrelated. By examining how the books were used in different artistic and medical contexts, I will make some broader reflections on enduring concerns of the medical humanities  with lived experience and narrative, empathy, medical metaphors, and the value of the arts in medical education. I will conclude by showing how this research into the communicative potential of the artist's book has influenced recent interdisciplinary work at the intersection of law, mental health advocacy, community arts and social justice.