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UNDER AFRICAN SCANS

Submitted by Editor on

Marilène Oliver's work spans new digital technologies, traditional print and sculpture.

She uses MRI and PET scanning to discover the inside of the human body, translating it into data form and examining the way it is now 'unfleshed'.

The result is a mysterious, moving and at times unsettling study of the literal body and its digitised existence as lived by so many of us even outwith any medical context.

Born in the UK, Oliver studied Fine Art at Central Saint Martin's and then at the Royal College of Art. She got an MPhil with the practice-based research project ‘Flesh to Pixel, Flesh to Voxel, Flesh to XYZ’ on the use of medical imaging in contemporary art.

She now lives and works in Angola, where her experience of Africa has caused her to 'rethink her relationship with the scanned body'. As in the etching 'Mosquitos' above (© Marilène Oliver), the result is broodily symbolic, and much concerned with questions of personal and technological privilege. 

Oliver's current, solo exhibition Confusão will run at Edinburgh Printmakers until 16 May.