Photo: Janina Sabaliauskaite

The visceral body is the real and imagined bodily interior, defined as both real anatomy shaped by objective medical knowledge and imagined anatomy shaped by subjective experience of the body in medicine. This project seeks to occupy this tension between the real and imagined, highlighting new innovative interdisciplinary scholarship in the art-science field through archaeological, clinical and artistic understandings of the visceral body in medicine.

The project will focus on 4th century BCE Etruscan votive womb from the Shefton Collection to stimulate interdisciplinary learning and dialogue around ancient objects and the body in a series of art-led workshops. The artwork produced in response to the workshops will be publically exhibited and feature a programme of talks to consider how artistic practice facilitates new ways of considering the visceral body in medicine in contemporary scholarship.