In anticipation of the opening of ‘narrative cardiology’ exhibition The Heart of the Matter at the Copeland Gallery in London in November, Wendy Lowe reviews this summer’s Bristol installation of the show (The Heart of the Matter, Centrespace and the RWA, Bristol 14 July to 19 August 2018).
Artist Angela Maddock’s review of the Bristol exhibition will be published on The Polyphony next week.
“Though my heart has its reason
The reason doesn’t know”
– Helena Ward, The Lake
‘How does it feel
to be a heart?’
For all I know is Love
And I find my heart Infinite
and Everwhere!
– Hafiz
Whatever your vocation, be in allowance of a necessary heartbreak
– David Whyte
What could be more important than the workings of the heart, that life-giving and sustaining organ that acts as a compass through the difficult terrain of our journeys? This exhibition explores the relationship between cardiology and the lived experience of a troubled heart, using art, sound and movement. The Heart of the Matter began when the creators, bioengineer Giovanni Biglino and artist Sofie Layton, realised that the heart is both medical and poetic. Intertwining these themes, the exhibition provides a rich substrate for exploring the heart in relation to both clinical and metaphysical contexts.
The exhibition is split across two locations in Bristol. The first site I visited, Centrespace, held an array of visual, tactile and auditory pieces that captivated me as soon as I walked in. Behind delicate screens of a more ephemeral nature than usually encountered in the industrial NHS, were altars of hearts created by 3D imaging, each contained within a glass bell jar. This powerful symbolism reminded me of the individualised and contained nature of our heart songs, which are so often shaped by entrenched ideas about what it means to be a human – healthy or sick, normal or pathological in our anatomy. This theme was carried through in Blueprints, where the walls were adorned with pictures of the heart from different anatomical and poetical perspectives. Interspersed with textual accounts of patients’ lived experiences, the exhibition yielded a veritable cornucopia of heart reflections.
This ability of art to reflect back the subjective experience of both patients and medical practitioners addresses a void so often apparent in the biomedical world. In this exhibition, art provides a doorway through which to see things differently. For example, one person’s vision of her ‘soldier’ heart – the strength and perseverance required in the face of adversity – had inspired a hologram of the heart contained within a cube. As I leant in to gain a closer look at the hologram, which was truly fascinating, I startled as I saw someone appearing overhead, looking at me as I looked at the heart. By this trick of a mirror, I was reminded of Foucault’s writing on the gaze and how formative of the self this was – he thought the idea of looking for a self was like looking into a mirror image of infinite regress, an abstraction rendered meaningless.[1]Whereas the experiential meaning for me of the omnipotence of the gaze in the context of an exhibition on the heart made me feel strangely protective of this usually hidden part of ourselves.
The RWA gallery held an additional two spaces that could be physically entered into. The evocation of an operating theatre with heart muscle cells on stained glass windows/walls of Sacred was a beautiful testament to what can often seem mechanical and harsh in the world of the NHS. The finale for me was the film inside the darkened room of the RWA gallery where lines, images, colours, sound and music combined to draw together the different threads of the conversations started in the other heart spaces. Here the human form became prominent, accompanied by whales, mermaids, trees, coral reefs: drawn from the unconscious and the feminine, these moving images seemed to suggest that there remains much more still to unfold from this initial journey into The Heart of the Matter.
This is a rich exploration of what matters to the heart in the context of lived experience and medical practice. Once this exhibition has been installed in its new London venues (V&A, 22-23 September 2018 as part of Digital Design Weekend; and the Copeland Gallery, 31 October to 11 November 2108), I encourage you to experience it for yourself, as it offers a meaningful and moving meditation on the value of continued conversation between the poetic heart and the organ of medical science.
[1] Foucault, M. (1988). Technologies of the Self. A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Ch 2 inTechnologies of Self. Martin, L.H., Gutman, H., Hutton, P.H. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press.
Wendy Lowe is a Senior Lecturer in Medical Sociology and Medical Education, Module Lead for the Human Science Public Health module in Years 2 and 3 of the MBBS and GEP at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry. Her PhD explored how health professionals are educated.
The Heart of the Matter
I enter
the heart space.
The labyrinth
of my heart
hoping to find
a revelation
that will unlock
the secret heart
I carry within.
Behind
fine gossamer threads,
screens with words
and images of the
heart,
lie models and pictures,
carvings
and representations.
A rubik cube
of the complexity
of strength
and vulnerability,
imagining
never to be solved
as it clicks
endlessly away
to the room.
Echoing
as if we were
solitary witnesses
in a dis-inhabited
chamber of the heart.
Bell jars
contain
plastic models
of different hearts.
Fine filigrees
reaching up
like coral beds
in the deepest oceans.
Secret anatomies
made visible
like ancient Saints’ reliquaries
held onto
as manifestations
of the divine.
The spirit of
redemption
between science
and experience
guides
this exhibition
of the heart.
A cry for conversation
between the inner
and the outer
as I enter
different spaces;
sacred rooms
of operating theatres,
light filled altars,
darkened chambers.
Inside a darkened
cubicle,
a soldier’s heart
fighting on
startles me
momentarily
as I am drawn in.
A figure looms
over,
viewing me
while I view the heart.
The gaze –
biomedical, patriarchal,
omnipotent –
is an absent presence here.
An abstraction
that still haunts
experience
as it defines
parameters of the heart.
As a fitting finale,
I sit in a dark
chamber
watching
a film
that draws together
the different aspects
of the show.
Humans appear –
hands, bodies,
eyes and breath.
So do whales and mermaids;
lines, light, colour
and sound.
Movement through
and beyond
as the heart
becomes embedded
in the context
of what it may
mean to be human
and be carried
by this fragile
yet strong organ.
Who is seen
with more
immediacy
than perhaps
ever before.
And yet
who seems to be
disappearing
further off
into an ever
retreating horizon.
Personally,
I see hearts
everywhere;
Flattened
black
chewing gum
ones
on dirty
sidewalks;
(these intrigue me
the most);
Clouds, leaves,
in windows,
cafes;
throughout my house.
As a reminder
of the constancy
of that
which is bigger
than me.
– Wendy Lowe, 6 August 2018
