After exploring the art exhibit Wonder Women 12: A Health Survey, I saw many works of art that struck me as interesting. I could have chosen more pieces of art for this assignment, but unfortunately, I was limited to only 2. Despite this setback, I was able to select just 2. These two works of art are Pain Atlas in Motion by Stephanie Tichenor and The Itchies by Sharon Lee De La Cruz. Both works of art are magnificent in their own special way. They both talk about health care in their own way. I personally believe these projects to be some of the best projects from the entire exhibit.
The art piece Pain Atlas in Motion by Stephanie Tichenor is meant to showcase the gap of knowledge between common citizens and healthcare providers. The project itself is quite simple. It is just a doll, made out of some sort of material, named “Little Steph”. The project allows for people to touch the doll and attach various shapes to the doll. There is a description for what each shape means and it goes as follows: blue water droplets for tingling or numbing, purple crystals for “crystal chards”, yellow swirls for radiating, pinkish dotted lines for penetrating or deep, brownish arrows for piercing, a red spiked line for burning or hot, orange “x”s for gnawing, green “*” for throbbing, blue triangles for agony, orange crowns for torturing, grey dots for aching, sore, or dull, yellow shapes similar to swiss cheese for a cluster of pricks, cyan ovals for tight or squeezing, blues vertical lines for miserable, green vertical zigzags for lightning bolt, flashing, or shooting, yellow shapes similar to the number 3 for cramping, and greenish zigzags for tiring, exhausting, or continuous. According to the plaque for this piece of art, it “gives voice to the ever changing sensations, pains, and weirdness that is fibromyalgia and chronic pain.” For those unaware, fibromyalgia is a “disorder characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain accompanied by fatigue, sleep, memory, and mood issues, according to mayoclinic.org”. This disorder is very common with a reported 3 million annual cases in the United States. This work of art conveys to the audience the fact that there is a massive gap of knowledge between ordinary people and healthcare providers. Medical professionals usually use Latin words for medical terminology. For example, medical professionals will use the term “anaphylactic shock” to describe a severe allergic reaction, instead of just calling it a “severe allergic reaction”. The purpose of this work of art was to provide a simpler form of describing the chronic pains someone with the disorder would experience to a healthcare provider. The creator of this work of art, Stephanie Tichenor, in the plaque, says that “As a patient I have always disliked and felt disconnected from clinical pain charts. That too needed a redesign and became a self portrait.” I believe that this piece of art works well to describe the fact that a “gap of knowledge” between common citizens and medical professionals exists.
The art piece The Itchies by Sharon Lee De La Cruz is meant to show a person’s journey to get medication from a discriminatory healthcare system. The art piece is quite simple, just a comic and a prescription for the “itchies”, though what is in the comic is anything but simple. In the comic, the protagonist faces an unknown allergy, with rashes and “itchies” covering her skin. The protagonist then struggles with her physician to resolve this allergic reaction. According to the plaque for this project, the work of art “uses humor and horror to reflect on the time I gave myself heavy metal poisoning and the journey that ensued trying to heal myself.” The book Confessions of The Guerilla Girls has a quote that can work for this project. The quote “In an age of sound bytes, their one-liners fly like barbed arrows…” comes to mind. The Guerilla Girls find an audience through the usage of humor to state their opinions against sexism and racism. The prescription for the “itchies” also has pink splatters on the paper itself. Whether or not this was intentional is unknown.
These works of art paint a picture about the healthcare system in the United States. Many people struggle to get proper healthcare. These people, usually minorities, face discrimination in this medical environment, especially people of color. These people face stigmas and bias that would affect the patients’ diagnosis and treatment. These doctors usually have a sort of ego to them, insisting that they know more about the body than the patient does. This sort of elitism is dangerous in such an environment, where one slip-up is the difference between life and death. They use these Latin terms when simpler words would work just fine. I personally believe that the gallery works in showing this struggle.
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