
Every year, the K.F. Hein Fund art committee selects a graduating student of the Utrecht School of the Arts for a participatory art project. The aim is to offer a budding artist the opportunity to develop and gain experience with applied art and participation projects and actively involve staff, residents or visitors in the creation of the new site-specific work. Sarah Mclacken was selected for the 2021 Art Participation Project. In this art project, she partnered with students and healthcare professionals at UMC Utrecht.
The artwork was inspired by conversations McLacken had with UMC Utrecht staff and students and the A.A. Hijmans van den Bergh building. Through online encounters, research and experiments with medical materials, she explored the relationship between doctor and patient. The sculptural work is a visual representation of her research and lessons learned from her conversations.
Sarah asked herself, "How can we reflect on and discuss physician-patient relationships from different perspectives? How can we look at our assumptions with fresh eyes and see the complexity within these relationships?"
Student Sterre van Wierst participated in the project and says, "It was an enriching experience to organize student participation in this project as well as to participate myself! As a student being trained for a work field that is a bit further away from the arts, it seemed challenging at first to connect these disciplines. Approaching the (bio)medical discipline from the arts brings students a different perspective and a deeper awareness in the work they do. The great thing about this project is that the students also shared experiences between different programs and found a lot of common ground within the arts!"
Sarah describes the process she went through in a publication.
Photography: Sarah Mclacken