The Fashionable Prosthetic: Investigating the visibility and new fashion of prosthetic research.

ABSTRACT:  “The aim of this research is to explore the relationship between the technological advancements of prostheses and the emergence of prosthetics as fashion. This research intends to argue that the technological advancements in health research – specifically prosthetics and implants – have refigured a conversation based purely on form and function to one of potential, aesthetics and art. The assertion is that prosthetics have become the means by which to transform identity and the body itself. As a visual artist, I am interested in investigating the relationship between the visibility of the prostheses and the new wave discussion of fashionable prosthetics.  Central to a discussion of the advancement of technology in health research and its reflection on contemporary culture and medicine, the research will manifests as a visual narrative, attempting to bridge the gap between art and science as well as that of our physical bodies and the experience of technological interactions. In this way, the research encourages a discourse between the body and an identity formed within the proliferation of technological advancements in prosthetic research.”
January 2011.

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