Inside the Body: Medical Imaging and the Visual Arts

Abstract

The show of the display of the inner body has been charming the West for more than five hundred years, but it was only by the end of the 19^th century that the invention of radiography allowed a radically new phenomenological experience: peering inside a living body. In the 20^th century, medical imaging evolved in a spectacular manner, re-defining the way we see our bodies, literally and metaphorically (think about the new identity of the foetus, promoted by ultrasound imaging, and that of the mind, fostered by functional imaging). In this article, I try to explore some of these transformations, analyzing the work of artists who elaborate very different representations and discourses about the body, but who share the choice of using medical images and technologies.