Instruments of Oblivion

The curtains are drawn, and the performer addresses his audience. 'I will be driving this ice pick through the patient’s eye', he says. Murmurs of shock and intrigue emanate from the crowd. The ice pick – a pointed metal rod with a wooden handle, was not invented for such a feat.

He has no idea what will become of his victim, but the audience is intrigued, and none the wiser. 

Instruments of Oblivion is an exploration of an era in the history of medicine, where the line was never drawn. People deemed physically or mentally unwell were experimented on, and mutilated, sometimes in front of a live audience.

These experimental doctors thought they were paving the way into the future, creating procedures they thought would become commonplace. Each patient was a test subject, collateral damage on the long, and twisted path to curing humankind of everything considered abnormal.

2023