Artist-in-residence

During the fall of 2023, Anna Odell will be artist-in-residence at the Centre for Medical Humanities (CMH). This means that she will be part of the research environment at CMH and work on her own art project entitled ”Psyket” [The Psychiatric Ward]. The project is a video installation that explores the dynamics among the staff when complex social situations arise between patients and caregivers in inpatient psychiatry.

Medical humanities is about asking questions related to medicine, disease and health in a cultural and social context. It is also an interdisciplinary field of research where different knowledge traditions from the natural sciences and social sciences and humanities meet. Inviting artists through an Artist in residence initiative is an attempt to incorporate artistic perspectives on medicine, care and health in this already interdisciplinary field.

Anna Odell has done several art projects that thematize psychiatric care. Most notably ”Okänd kvinna 2009-349701” [Unknown woman 2009-349701] in 2009. Her proposed project ”Psyket” continues this work in a curious and innovative way. Psychiatry is a branch of medicine that often becomes the object of studies within the medical humanities, perhaps because of its nature as a fringe phenomenon between body and soul, medicine and psychology. Therefore, Anna Odell's project fits very well into our ongoing activities. 

Within the framework of this Artist in residence, we will arrange an open symposium on the theme ”Art in research - Research in art”, focused on how artists and researchers can develop new knowledge by approaching each other’s practices and knowledge traditions. This will be co-organized with UU Samverkan.

This is our first artist in residence at the Centre for Medical Humanities. It is an initiative to promote artistic perspectives on medicine, pharmacy and healthcare, as well as the societal and cultural issues that relate to them. The objective of the initiative is to investigate and develop new forms of knowledge exchange between artists, researchers and students, in order to widen the perspectives with which we investigate and understand phenomena and processes related to medical humanities. Our goal is for the Artist in residence to become a recurring feature of the activities at the Centre for Medical Humanities.

Erika Sigvardsdotter, Coordinator at Department of History of Science and Ideas, Anna Odell, artist, and Ylva Söderfeldt, Director of the Centre for Medical Humanities. Photo: Uppsala universitet