Catalyzing H.E.A.L. Medicine Research Creation Project by Dr Darian Goldin Stahl

Catalyzing H.E.A.L. Medicine Principle Investigator Dr. Sarah de Leeuw and University of Toronto Clinician-Investigator for the University Health Network Centre for Mental Health, Dr. Suze Berkhout, joined their health humanities research projects to be reimagined through an artistic lens. The UT Temerty Faculty of Medicine Medical Humanities Education Matching Fund sponsored Darian Goldin Stahl to undertake this research-creation project. The results are an edition of five artist’s books, Medical // Humanities Volumes I and II, as well as a wall-mounted reinterpretation of the book, Medical // Humanities Volumes I, II, & III.

One artist’s book resides with Dr. Berkout, one with the University of Toronto Thomas Fish Rare Book Library, and one with the Moody Memorial Library at Baylor University. The wall piece is now on permanent display in the University Health Network Health Sciences Library in the Toronto General Hospital. An opening event for the installation of Medical // Humanities Volumes I, II, & III in the hospital library took place on October 25. The project team aims for this work to become an educational resource for health humanities research, and exemplify the power of art to initiate critical dialogues in clinical spaces.

Medical // Humanities Volumes I & II
Artist’s Book
11.5” x 7”
Encaustic transfer on silk
2024

Artist Statement:

This artist’s book invites readers to grasp the questions, frustrations, and potential of integrating arts-based methodologies with medical education. It contains two volumes hinged around a central cover. The first volume pieces together the structure and outcomes of Dr. Sarah de Leeuw’s Catalyzing H.E.A.L. Medicine project, a scoping literature review in search of decoloniality in peer-reviewed medical humanities publications from the 1970’s to today. The second volume contains clippings from the presentation, Productive Tensions in Medical Humanities, which was the result of research carried out by Hannah Barnard-Chumik under the supervision of Dr. Suze Berkhout and Dr. Julia Gray. This presentation reviews the transformation of medical humanities toward a more critical perspectives, and how this shift sits in tension with the role that the humanities are imagined to play in medical education. Throughout both volumes, a window is punctured through the centre of each page and cover. This rupture creates space yet obscures the arts-based research that remains stubbornly in the margins of medical education.

Medical // Humanities is constructed in a Do-Si-Do format that opens from both the front and the back. It is bound in cloth taken from both hospital gowns and scrubs, and the interior images contain scans of laboratory equipment cascading around the central window. The pages are printed using an encaustic toner transfer technique onto silk, which renders them nearly transparent. The sheer materiality of the pages also enables the readers’ hands to join the composition.

The double-book construction speaks to the persistent dualistic qualities of medical humanities, while the translucency attempts to merge the disciplines. The window can be seen as an attempt to bridge both sides, though the deletions may only add to the frustrations of merging academic paradigms. However, by inviting the viewer to shift the transparent layers across the spines of the book, new compositions and meanings may emerge. The mix of imagery and materiality implicates medical personnel, scientists, patients, and the general public within the stakes of developing more integrated models of medical humanities.

To see the full documentation of this research-creation project, please visit our website: https://www.criticalhealthhumanities.com/deliverables