‘Don’t you believe me?’: breaking down the doctor-patient paradigm through art

This confronting artistic project lays bare tensions between dismissive or disbelieving medical professionals and patients suffering from chronic illness.

An example of Michelle Hamer’s work as part of the I’m A Believer project.

The I’m A Believer project, which exhibited in Melbourne last year, sought to bring to light “a lexicon of disbelief and dismissal” in the language often used by medical ­professionals when dealing with patients’ chronic illnesses. There were ­colourful hand-stitched pieces displaying tongue-in-cheek statements of the kind artist Michelle Hamer is well known for (another of her projects, Relax, We’re Doing Great, was a series of 120 hand-stitched works inspired by statements she’d ­observed during the pandemic lockdowns). Also featured in I’m a Believer were 21 ­limited-edition silkscreen prints created by redacting real-life confidential letters, medical ­imaging and a page of patients’ anecdotal ­experiences and presenting them in a stark, clinical/­administrative palette of black, blue, grey and white. Yet as art theorist Anna Ricciardi notes in an essay for a new book about the exhibition, “these can be colours of sensitivity, too, of tender skin ‘made black and blue’ by bruising”.  

   

   

Submitted by the public following an international call-out in 2021, Hamer says “the letters for the artworks and submissions for this project hold so much shame and trauma – but the flipside is that the complex chronic illness community, in general, also have a very dark sense of humour.

“It’s been a privilege and a challenge to try and hold both. I am indebted to their vulnerability, as well to as the medical doctors who have supported this project. It could not have happened without doctors and healthcare professionals being willing to confront their own professions, history of modes of practice, language, having empathy for patients and an interest in what art can do to expand conversations.” 

   

“Hand-stitching and pixelation have long been part of how I explore the nuances and contexts of everyday language and communication,” Hamer says. “In addition, the flux between manual and digital and the faster pace of documentation versus the slowness of production also reveal ways for me to lean into other mediums. (The above) artworks share quotes from submitted material and highlight, through camouflage-like colour patterns and glowin typeface, some of the humour and time embedded in the project.”

   

   

”The monoprints were made by reusing screens from the redacted editioned works and layering/screen-printing them over each other,” Hamer explains. “While some specific rhythms were set to be explored, others evolved in more instinctive ways. Each work allows a rereading of the project and the opportunity to further play with the language and repetition.”

   

   

“Identifying details were removed from letters, while official formatiting and scanned decay was retained,” Hamer says. “Dismissive or delegitimising wording in medical reports (which casts doubt or disbelief on symptoms) and the experience of patients themselves was left exposed and legible, along with any implied subjective or moral value judgments.” Some works were also derived from medical imaging.

   

   

I’m A Believer by Michelle Hamer ($150) is available at Linden New Art and Art Gude Bookshop.