Chest: a botanical ecology

Title

Is Part Of

Biological Sciences See all items with this value

History See all items with this value

SA College of Music See all items with this value

Fine Art See all items with this value

Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Research See all items with this value

Centre for Curating the Archive See all items with this value

Description

Illness and disease affect us all. The treatment of these conditions however, has been vast and varied, depending on the historical periods and the cultural context in and during which they are practiced. Situated in the rock art gallery, where healing power is expressed in San paintings, this mobile set of cabinets explores a rich complex of healing practices through the display of a medicine chest which was donated to the university of Cape Town in 1978. This chest belonged to a British dentist, who practiced in Cape Town from 1904, and who bought the chest for a hunting trip he undertook in 1913 to (then) Northern Rhodesia. The idea of the chest then gives rise to a variety of forms of healing: from instruments used to exorcise evil spirits and children's letters written to celebrate a heart transplant; to medicinal flowers bought at the Adderley Street flower market. The exhibition aims to visualise and materialise illness and its treatment from historical, cultural and disciplinary perspectives. Drawing on well-established historical and contemporary connections between the disciplines of Botany, Medicine and Pharmacology, the exhibits also suggest latent links which are at times political, at times whimsical.

Curriculum

Philosophia Botanica See all items with this value

Creator

Nina Liebenberg See all items with this value

Date Created

4 November 2018

endDate

31 March 2019

Resonances

Chest: a botanical ecology See all items with this value

iroko See all items with this value

musical instruments See all items with this value

Curiosity CLXXV See all items with this value

drum See all items with this value

South African Museum See all items with this value

cabinet See all items with this value

medicine chest See all items with this value

mobility See all items with this value

virus See all items with this value

vaccine See all items with this value

sound See all items with this value

classification See all items with this value

Honours in Curatorship See all items with this value

rock art See all items with this value

illness See all items with this value

exhibition See all items with this value

dentist See all items with this value

Botany See all items with this value

Adderley Street flower sellers See all items with this value

politics See all items with this value

Pharmacology See all items with this value

children See all items with this value

Pippa Skotnes See all items with this value

Fritha Langerman See all items with this value

Type

Exhibition

Site pages

Materials

Item