The Scar of Visibility - Medical Performances and Contemporary Art - Grand Format

Contemporary visual and performance artists have adopted modern medical technologies such as MRIs and computer imaging - and the bodily access they imply - to reveal their limitations. In doing so they emphasize the unknowability of another's bodily experience and the effects - physical, emotional, and social - of medical procedures. In The Scar of Visibility, Petra Koppers examines the use of medical imagery practices in contemporary art, as well as different arts of everyday life (self-help groups, community events, Internet sites), focusing on fantasies and "knowledge projects" surrounding the human body.
At the heart of this work is the scar - a place of production, of repetition and difference, of multiple nerve sensations, fragile skin, outer sign, and bodily depth. Through the embodied sign of the scar, Kuppers articulates connections between subjective experience, history, and personal politics, and The Scar of Visibility broadens our understanding of the significance of medical images in visual culture.