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Empowering Women through Technology, Self-Exploration and Art
March 8, 2019
Learn how a global art and empowerment project grew out of a medical device designed by Duke’s Center for Global Women’s Health Technologies in this behind-the-scenes interview with Libby Dotson (Trinity, '18), exhibition curator.
This article is excerpted with permission from the Rubenstein Arts Center. Click here to read the full Q&A by Annie Kornack.
The exhibition (In)visible Organ (on view in the Ruby through March 8) reflects the empowering experiences of women who used the Calla Campaign’s Callascope. The team behind the exhibition aims to increase awareness of cervical cancer globally while combating stigmas around women’s health.
“This art exhibit was an idea that Wesley Hogan, director of the Center for Documentary Studies, and I tossed around over dinner and then subsequently put together in the form of a proposal to the Duke Council for the Arts more than two years ago,” said Nimmi Ramanujam, Robert W. Carr Professor of Biomedical Engineering and director of the Center for Global Women’s Health Technologies.
“While I had an idea what I wanted this art exhibit to speak to, I could have never envisioned what it actually turned out to be—a beautiful collection of women’s voices told in the most authentic and expressive ways about a sacred part of their bodies. Libby and her team achieved a monumental feat and I am so proud of her and grateful to everyone that contributed to this mission. I just hope we can keep the conversation going and not lose the momentum that this exhibit has created,” Ramanujam continued.
In this interview, recent alumna Libby Dotson describes the origins of this innovative art exhibition, her role as lead curator and her hopes of expanding this positive, inclusive conversation on women’s health globally.
Read the full Q&A here on the Rubenstein Arts Center website.