presCRIPtion for change

A participatory, socially engaged performance at Tate Exchange (Tate Modern, Blavatnik Building), as a part of SALE, January 2020

At the event, participants/patients-turned-doctors were asked to collect a ticket from the machine and join me to open up a consultation to diagnose the Tate Exchange – focusing on the architecture of the space and inanimate objects within the vicinity.

Date: Sunday 19th January 2020
Time: 1pm - 2pm
Location: Tate Exchange, Level 5, Tate Modern, Blavatnik Building.

‘presCRIPtion for change’ is a socially engaged and participatory work that uses subversive humour to explore the role reversal of the diagnostic gaze and the power, language and ethics within a doctor - patient relationship, as a disabled woman of colour. It also touches upon the racial gaze - the question that asks, "where are you from?" and "what are you?"

Through advances in science – particularly revolutionary theory – the disabled and sick body is often represented in museums and galleries under glass and as objects of spectatorship, curiosity and specimens. In “presCRIPtion for change” I reverse the dynamics by placing myself, a disabled, neurodiverse woman of colour, into a doctor’s coat and confront the landscape and spectators with the diagnostic gaze that hides behind the choreographed staring encounter disabled people face daily.

X-rays (under the data protection act), images and works. All Rights Reserved ©️ 2021 Aminder Virdee.