The Scar of Visibility: Medical Performances and Contemporary Art

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 Kuppers 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.