RECOMMENDATION // HEALING OUR WOUNDS, FEEDING THE MOON
‘Feed the Moon’
Works by Natessa Amin
Commonweal Gallery
1607 Latimer Street
January 19 – March 2
EXCERPT //
As a child, her father, a surgeon, and her mother, a nurse, had a family practice, which allowed Amin to observe all manner of bodily trauma. “After school, we would go to their office while they were still seeing patients, and my dad would take us to the emergency room with him if we were out with him and he got called into the hospital,” she wrote to RQ. “Medical books and photo documentation with graphic images of wounds were always lying around. My dad did reconstructive surgery, and there were countless times a patient would show up to his office with major injuries where I would witness my parents and their staff work diligently to reattach fingers or close major lacerations.”
The experience left her with an appreciation of how we heal. “I think being around that action made me aware of the healing mechanisms our bodies can perform and also exposed me to an acute attention to craft, process, and procedure. I loved learning about the materials they were using and their purposes—gauze, tapes, scalpels, sutures, etc. This was my early introduction to materiality, and I think in some way has informed my interest in how I use materials in my art and why my work often takes on more tactile surface quality.” //
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