Anna Odell as Artist in residence at Uppsala University
Erika Sigvardsdotter, Coordinator at Department of History of Science and Ideas, Anna Odell, artist, andYlva Söderfeldt, Director of the Centre for Medical Humanities. Photo: Uppsala universitet
In the fall of 2023, the Center for Medical Humanities have an Artist in Residence. The first artist is Anna Odell. She will be part of the center's research environment and work on her own art project entitled "Psyket". Anna Odell has previously created several art projects that thematize psychiatric care. Perhaps the most noticed of these is "Okänd kvinna 2009-349701", from 2009.
– Mental health and psychiatry as a branch of medicine often become the subject of studies within the medical humanities, perhaps especially for its nature as a fringe phenomenon between body and soul, between medicine and psychology. Therefore, Anna Odell's project fits very well into our ongoing activities, says Ylva Söderfeldt, director of the Center for Medical Humanities.
Anna Odell's project "Psyket" is a video work that explores the dynamics of a staff group when complex social situations arise between patients and caregivers in an inpatient psychiatry ward. Within the framework of this artist-in-residence, an open symposium will be organized on the theme "Art in research - Research in art" about how artists and researchers can develop new knowledge by approaching each other's practices and knowledge traditions.
– I strongly believe in interdisciplinary collaborations and was so incredibly happy when I got the opportunity to make an artistic work in dialogue with researchers from several different fields, says Anna Odell.
With the Artist in residence initiative, the Center for Medical Humanities wants 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 thus widen the perspectives with which we investigate and understand phenomena and processes related to medical humanities.
– Inviting active artists through an Artist in residence initiative is a way for us to also bring in artistic perspectives on medicine, care and health into this already interdisciplinary field, says Ylva Söderfeldt.