Sofie Layton

I have a profound interest in the medical landscape and how medical concepts are perceived and re-appropriated by patients and society. My research practice is an investigation into the sick body. The work focuses on the heart, and specifically questions how women understand their own and their baby’s internal bodies when captured through medical imaging techniques. The art practice explores the discourse surrounding the mother-and-child dyad and questions whether imaging data, such as ultrasound can be used in new ways outside the clinical setting.

I will illustrate this process and my research by practice by exploring the role of the artist as witness within the clinical setting, working with and translating patients’ narratives and the medical image through a haptic engagement with 3D objects.

My artistic practice is collaborative and interdisciplinary. Working in the medical landscape requires a rigorous understanding of the scientific language held alongside patient experience which honours the seriousness of illness, whilst ensuring that the artistic practice maintains its own authority.