Duderstadt
Center
Opening:
May 2 from 5 - 8pm
Women's
Caucus for Art-Michigan presents
The
Art of Healing: Explorations of Women's Health
Artists Speak out about Women's Health Care
With
the nation's health care needs in the spotlight this election
year, the Feminist Art Project in partnership with the
Women's Caucus for Art-Michigan, and The Therapy Center
of Ann Arbor, all non-profit organizations, with the University
of Michigan have brought together an expressive, dynamic,
informative and challenging exhibit. The artwork on display
includes both patient and care-taker perspectives as well
as responses to social, political and historical health
issues.
The Art of Healing exhibit will be on display at the Gallery
at the Duderstadt Center (previously the Media Union)
on North Campus of the University of Michigan. The show
runs from May 2 -16, 2008. All are invited to the Opening
Reception, May 2, at the Gallery from 5-8 pm.
One of the goals of this exhibit, The Art of Healing:
Explorations of Women's Health, is to show how art can
heal. In a most visual and visceral way, art can inform,
hopefully resulting in an improved and enlightened medical
community. The show says, "Look at us, talk to us,
understand our pain and our value as individuals".
It is a must see for those who appreciate thought-provoking
visual art, especially those who are members of the medical
and health-care fields. Women's bodies, nude, adorned,
eroticized or abstracted have figured prominently in the
history of art. Yet art dealing with women's health is
shockingly new. In December of 2004 in St. Louis, Missouri
one of the first exhibits to deal with this subject "Inside
Out Loud" was mounted, tracing the emergence of the
representation of women's health in American art beginning
around 1980 and into the 1990's.
The modern concept of women's health did not begin to
take shape until the early 1970s with the groundbreaking
publication of Our Bodies and Ourselves, and "women's
health" did not appear as a subject in the Index
Medicus, the massive worldwide bibliographic listing of
medical journal articles, until 1991. Now in 2008 women
are still struggling to understand their own bodies. Busy
medical professionals, whether male or female, are sometimes
brusque and may seem insensitive to our needs. In response,
contemporary artists are working through these and other
issues as both patients and care-givers. Their works reflect
the reality that our comfort and well-being is determined
by our own health and the health of our loved ones.
Christy
Kelly-Bentgen christykel@hotmail.com Phone: (734)424-0206
