Reaching to the stars: astrology and the body in the past, present and future
About
Current health and environmental crises heighten our awareness of the positioning of the human body within a global scale. United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for health and wellbeing, social inclusion and environment, and World Health Organisation and UNESCO initiatives emphasise the need to understand and respond to interrelationships between planetary and human health.
Centred on Wellcome Collection’s rich holdings relating to astrology, health and the body, the proposed research addresses this urgent imperative through a landmark project that will be Wellcome’s first CDA in the creative arts. The project focuses on Wellcome’s medieval European manuscripts and printed books, unique materials that reveal ideas about how the movements of the planets and the phases of the sun and moon directly impacted on health. By drawing comparisons between how past cultures were sensitized to the nuanced relationship between the individual human and the universe and how these knowledges are central to experiences of the body today, the project reappraises the value of these collections for contemporary perceptions and experiences.
Through practice-led artistic research using embroidery, photographic perforation, and haptic methodologies, historical astrological objects from the Wellcome Collection will be reinterpreted to identify how their mappings continue to shape contemporary understandings of health, embodiment, and intergenerational memory. Artefacts will serve as provocations for new artworks that translate historical astrological knowledge into contemporary tactile experiences, engaging with themes of fertility, health, and the body's relationship to fate and form. The final submission will take the form of multimodal expanded art practice that communicates to public audiences (at Wellcome Collection and beyond) through performance, publication and display, reframing and activating archival knowledge, and making historical astrological systems tangible through material engagement with the body, memory, and emotion.
