Description

My piece is an interactive creative piece, which is best presented via a video in the case that it is presented virtually. It is a combination of photography, collage and drawing. I wanted to comment on the importance of understanding narratives in medicine. We all come into the consultation with our own narrative, whether we are the patient, the doctor or the medical student. The photographs are pieces of self-portraits, edited to be black and white. To call these images “black and white” is ironic, as there are no true colors of white nor black, but the image is produced in a grayscale. The expression of emotions in the portraits can be seen as the two ends of the spectrum, the left one showing grief, anger and frustration. This image creates a contrast with the portrait on the right, showing happiness, laughter and joy. The idea of adding flowers came from the thought about collage inspired by Sarah MacKenzie. She discusses the concept of deconstruction and reconstruction and how this process can help find alternative meanings in the images that are used. Initially the piece without the flowers somehow put the laughing portrait at a higher pedestal than the other one. Maybe this is because society values “positive” emotions over “negative” ones. I found these images of flowers from my old journaling archives and decided to cut them out and layer them with the portraits to showcase the equality that exists between both extremes of the emotional spectrum. With this I want to make the point

that when we as humans are feeling anything at all, that itself is already valuable, and that the feeling and expressing of all emotions is equally valid. The piece also holds a highly personal value, but I would like to keep this alternative meaning to myself

Reflection

The piece is titled "The narratives we carry". The narratives we as humans bring to the table are constructed by ourselves, however as future doctors we hold a responsibility due to the narrative changing nature of a diagnosis. Inspired from this, I began creating a piece that would reflect on identity, how we can explore our lived experience and the narrative that stems from it, and what are the issues currently in cases where the doctor does not account for the patient’s narrative but rushes in with their own agenda as the first line of priority. The skull drawn in white gel pen on black cardboard in the center of the piece represents the black and white perspectives that some physicians might have while thinking that there is only one and right way to arrive to a diagnosis, and only one way to treat a patient. The grayscale photographs around it aims to make the point that patients often hope that physicians would treat them as humans with backstories and a wide spectrum of emotions rather than as a condition to treat.