Installed by medical students from Wayne State University at Detroit’s Heidelberg Project, The Detroit Medical Art Project seeks to highlight the lack of healthcare for many of Detroit’s residents.
Asking questions like, “How do you take care of your patients when the community is falling apart all around you?”, the students created the project from scavenged materials and donated equipment to depict a medical clinic that is so desperately needed in the area.
There’s a video in the Detroit Free Press article that features some quick, but good, interviews with the medical students who created the project, and shows some of the installation process. It’s interesting to know that type of discussion goes on in the classroom for medical training, and quite inspiring to see the kind of dialogue being generated through an installation.
[via Wooster Collective & Detroit Free Press]
I love this. I actually visited Heidelberg not too long ago, I wish they had installed it then.
I do find it interesting that the area is quite run down and health care seems to be tough to come by, yet this piece makes health care look ‘available’, like it should be, if that makes sense.
It’s an important matter, especially in Detroit, and I think they couldn’t have done it in a better area as well.
Rosina, glad you’ve had the chance to see Heidelberg … I agree with you, I think the location of the installation and the aesthetic of the installation itself really does help to highlight the lack of available health care and this project is a great example of why I’d much rather see energy put towards a creative critique of a problem rather than a more “traditional” protest.
The subtleties and layers in this kind of message / installation are significant.