Bound to Matter: Artists' Books and Illness Experience

Shifting the focus beyond traditional narrative modes of understanding illness that have dominated the first ‘wave’ of the medical humanities field, this chapter examines stories of illness that literally ‘matter’, as artists’ books, and that communicate illness experiences in uniquely materialist and tactile ways. I discuss a wide range of contemporary books by international artists drawn from the University of Kent’s “Prescriptions: Artists’ Books” collection. Through conceptual and meditative books, textured books that evoke palimpsests, sculptural book-bodies, and other experiments, the artists this chapter brings together expand the representational strategies available for communicating illness in medicine and culture.