For the third consecutive year, medical students at Dalhousie University have pooled their artistic talents in an exhibition of works that reflect on a medical theme. This year's show explores issues surrounding attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
“This [exhibition] allows us to speak to the public and provoke thought. That's one reason ADHD was chosen. This disease is often misunderstood,” says Jonah Samson, a third-year medical student who originally launched the idea for an annual exhibition with an email to his classmates asking if they were interested in transforming their medical insights into works of art.
This year 38 students accepted the challenge and created installations, photographs, sound pieces, quilts, stained glass and even a diorama for Focus: Zero In, Zoom In, which ran for two weeks in April at the Dalhousie Medical School.
Although the original intent was to nudge viewers into thinking about a particular medical issue and to provide a creative outlet for medical students, the annual exhibit has become a means “for students to learn about medicine in a different way,” notes Samson.
In his paper collage, 1280 Right Angles, Samson tried to put himself (and the viewer) in the shoes of a child with ADHD by deliberately making concentration difficult. Brightly coloured squares within squares prevent the eye from resting on any one spot for more than a second. “The overall effect is that you can't focus on any one colour,” says Samson, adding that compiling the collage was painstaking and labour intensive.
First-year student Madeline Morris looked at how ADHD affects a child's sense of self. She used wool to show how self-worth unravels as the disease distances a child from classmates and family. “I came across the analogy of weaving a blanket as a representation for building self-esteem. Each thread or colour represents a theme,” she writes in the exhibition catalogue.
For second-year student Pat Feltmate, the discordance between familiar images of a carefree childhood and a life tied to medication is expressed in a digital image entitled The Methylphenidate Machine. It is a realistic depiction of a candy dispenser brimming with Ritalin. The reaction it evokes is eerie discomfort.
“It is often said that Ritalin is given out like candy these days,” Feltmate writes. “While this served as the inspiration for the image itself, the message I intend to convey is a reminder that long-term medication and childhood do not fit together.”
Donalee Moulton Halifax, NS
Figure. Pat Feltmate, The Methylphenidate Machine. Digital image, 2001