Old Operating Theatre Museum

Blood of My Blood - Photography Exhibition by Magda Kuca

Magda Kuca presents a body of work highlighting the shared histories of photography and medicine at the Old Operating Theatre. Blood of My Blood is a multi-faceted project that investigates the link between personal narratives and scientific advancement through a photographic lens. Kuca’s solo exhibition blends in with the surroundings at the former site of both herbal apothecary and early surgical procedures. At the core of the project lies the artist’s response to her mother’s cancer journey. Applying a camera-less form of experimental photography to capture their embracing bodies, Kuca expresses shared vulnerability while echoing the effects of chemotherapy with the marks and traces left on the resulting image. For a series of wet collodion portraits captured on glass, and limbs on surgery-grade steel, Kuca allows the unvarnished surfaces to decompose and tarnish, repairing deliberate fractures with silver. Still lifes of plague doctor masks provide a link to the healing herbs grown in the museum’s attic. The contemporary works are displayed in cabinets alongside the museum’s main collection. Reminiscent of vintage medical journals, they evoke a sense of nostalgia while highlighting subsequent progress in overcoming physical injury and infectious disease. The surgeries at the Old Operating Theatre were performed on women without anaesthetics or antiseptics, in front of a live audience of predominantly male medical students.