‘Hysteria may be an illness of the past, but the medical and ideological notions of femininity that lie behind it offer insights into the illnesses of the present and the way they are perceived. And while modern medicine no longer talks about hysteria, it nonetheless continues to perpetuate the idea that the female body is far more vulnerable than its male counterpart. Premenstrual syndrome, postpartum depression, and ‘raging hormones’ are among the more recent additions to a medical mythology that is centuries old.’ – Asti Hustvedt, Medical Muses
Edinburgh’s Collective in Calton Hill is showing Paloma Proudfoot’s ceramic sculptures and friezes. An artist living and working in London, Proudfoot’s practice focuses on sculpture, performance, and sound, inspecting the relationship between the human body and identity, and the gendered social histories that shape it. After graduating from Edinburgh College of Art in 2014 and participating in the Edinburgh Art Festival’s emerging artist programme with Aniela Piasecka, she has had solo exhibitions in London, Salford, Berlin and Italy. Glass Delusion is her first solo exhibition in Scotland.
The exhibition’s title, Glass Delusion, comes from a rare psychiatric condition observed in the Middle Ages, when glass, as a luxury material, became more common. People with this condition were trapped in the belief that their bodies were made of glass – fragile and unable to function – and feared shattering. Proudfoot used this metaphor to emphasise how the period’s technological context shaped medical definitions and diagnoses.
Glass Delusion is also the title of the three-piece work created for this exhibition. Hung on the massive gallery wall, it is part of an ongoing series exploring the history of Salpêtrière hospital in Paris from the late 18th Century, where neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot’s treatment of ‘hysteria’ in women, based on hypnosis, turned into a public demonstration.
Glass Delusion (A Clinical Lesson) reminds us of this history by reimagining a painting that depicts one of those demonstrations. In 1887, André Brouillet painted an iconic scene in which a woman, Marie Wittman Blanche, is hypnotised and collapses into the arms of the famous neurologist Charcot, under the curious gaze of his male students.
In the original painting, the hypnotised woman collapsing unconscious into someone’s arms evokes a deep sense of vulnerability. Her body, entirely stripped of will, is turned into a show. According to the exhibition texts, on occasion, Charcot went so far as to attach feathers to patients’ bodies to demonstrate their uncontrollable shaking. Proudfoot has reflected this shuddering reality, placing a ceramic feather figure, an extension of one of the characters, on the wall.
It’s worth noting here that despite Proudfoot’s striking exploration of the victimisation of women through misdiagnosis and gender bias, there’s no sense of vulnerability in the gallery; instead, a comforting power surrounds the viewer.
Proudfoot’s decision to replace Charcot’s all-male audience with a choir of women and queer characters in the neighbouring piece, titled Glass Delusion (Lament), emphasises this power of togetherness.
Proudfoot has a long history of creating artworks that explore the female voice. This ceramic piece Glass Delusion (Lament) reflects an ancient Gaelic tradition called kneening, a ritualised practice after death, mostly performed by women, involving crying, lamenting, singing, and poetry to express grief collectively. Here, Proudfoot puts collective sound against the ‘man-made isolating sound’ of the tuning fork and gong used to put people into hypnosis.
In Glass Delusion (Dissection), an artist is viewed from behind, working on a lily painting, with Proudfoot placing an identical hand of the painter on the canvas next to the painting, touching the leaves. Simultaneously, the painter’s brush, as if an extension of her hand, pokes the flower. Here, we need to go back to the original painting by André Brouillet and have a closer look: on the back wall of the room, behind the audience, there hangs an anatomical study of a hypnotised woman. Proudfoot references and reworks that study in this artwork.
Proudfoot repeats several patterns in this exhibition. One of these is lilies: according to the exhibition texts, she was drawn ‘to their complexity as emblems of purity and innocence, but also regularly associated with death and mourning’. To me, they are also symbols of fragility, especially in the way Proudfoot has made them with such delicate, refined beauty. Fragility has long been aestheticised as a form of feminine beauty, and the lilies deepen this sense of delicacy throughout the exhibition.
Two sculptures, Keener (II) and Keener (III), are placed in the middle of the room. They depict beautiful flowers held in hands – another motif repeated throughout the exhibition. The story deepens with a closer look, as the quiet beauty of the flowers appears to emerge from a mouth. A dialogue is created between the lament on the wall and the sculptures. These flowers become part of the collective voice.
With her background in textiles, Proudfoot applies dressmaking techniques to the medium of clay. She creates both flat and three-dimensional figures by using tailor’s-pattern paper to draw each figure, then creates a template to build them in clay.
She also uses mannequin referencing ‘how female patients at Salpêtrière hospital were treated as if like puppets, malleable to the direction of the male doctors.’ On the torso of a ceramic mannequin, the way she combined the figures’ body parts with metal fixings gives the impression of a puppet.
We see the same mannequin in the work Doublespeak, this time held by a figure. The work is inspired by a performance developed with long-term collaborator Aniela Piasecka, who brings the sculpture to life by holding and moving with it.
A 2024 performance by Piasecka titled Lay Figure can be viewed in the library at the City Observatory, where the visitor can also find a selection of books to read on the themes explored in the exhibition. Proudfoot and Piasecka will revisit this collaboration on Friday 22nd May, between 6 and 8pm with a special performance of Lay Figure, with Piasecka moving the creaking limbs of the mannequin as if a second body, to a new music by Ailie Ormston.
All images © Eoin Carey. With thanks to Omur Sahin Keyif (Insta: @theartsreporter) for this review.
