Medicine Body

September 29 - October 30, 1992

Medicine Body features the work of artists from across the nation that relates to medicine, healing, disease, and cultural rituals that define these common experiences. This exhibition takes the viewer on a visual journey from the “death chambers” in states that use capital punishment, to people suspended in water and air, through the healing experience of yoga, and into an installation that invites the viewer to participate in its creation. Debra Risberg, curator of the exhibition, believes that it is an auspicious time to promote art that expresses how we relate to and understand our physical being and how it is defined and reflected in our cultural attitudes and rituals. “The way we understand and treat our own bodies is reflected in the way we control and respond to the environment as a whole,” she said. “This exhibition is meant to engage the viewer in an observation of one’s own personal experience with medicine, death, aging, healing, and ritual and to promote a dialogue about the cultural conditions that influenced our experiences.”

Artists featured in Medicine Body include Sue Anderson and Barbara Hammer of California; Bill Burns of Montreal; Lucinda Devlin, Robert Flynt, John Orentlicher, and Joe Ziolowski of New York; Christina Howe of Washington; Gary Higgins of Arizona; Anita Jung, Carol Padberg, and Kathy Pilat of Illinois; Belinda Razka of Pennsylvania; and Jeffrey Silverthorne of Indiana.