Art, Body, Health

Communicating One Health Concepts through Art

Art, Body, Health was an undergrad studio art course that Morgan Yacoe developed for art and premedical students to collaborate amongst themselves, and with medical professionals to come up with interdisciplinary solutions to medical problems. This year, the One Health Center of Excellence teamed up with Morgan and her students to create two projects aiming at explaining the concept of One Health through examples of current relevancy that were of interest for the students. The students (pictured above) divided into two teams and created the projects “Plastíc: Rethinking Fashion” and “Cat Chronicles”.

Plastíc: Rethinking Fashion

Fast fashion operates without educating consumers on the process behind creating clothing. It relies on low labor costs, the use of synthetics that release micro plastics, and results in high levels of water pollution that gets used in agriculture and livestock handling. Sickening plants and animals that get consumed by humans creating a chain of illness from one source. Through this "clothing boutique" installation and info-graphic set, we aim to shed light on the process of producing clothing, and offer alternatives to reduce our impact on the world's health as consumers. See more at their website.

Cat Chronicles

Despite outside cats having a general stereotype of being harmless, they are susceptible to various diseases, have a tendency to disrupt animals around them, and are exposed to various risks that could endanger the life of your pet. Through our project, we're hoping to convey the dangers that letting cats outside brings to you, the environment, and the cat itself. Feral cats pose a problem to public health and so we hope to create a video with animations that illustrate preventative methods to keep everyone involved safer.

Morgan Yacoe is a current graduate student in sculpture within the SA+AH and instructor of the course Art, Body, Health. She is a transdisciplinary artist who specializes in the intersection of the arts and health. Her goal as an artist is to work creativity with people and materials to facilitate greater opportunity and integrated learning through traversing the worlds of art and health. She has worked on ground-breaking projects like the separation of conjoined twins at VCU Medical School creating a first-of-its-kind medical sculpture of the twins to help with presurgical planning. She has also created numerous training models and workshops that utilizes art integration help advance surgical training for breast reconstruction for surgeons and medical school students. In addition, she has produced innovative undergraduate art studio courses, Art, Body, Health and graduate medical education workshops, The Art of Observation. She has presented her work in a TED talk, and at art conferences and medical conferences across the country, as well as in published in peer reviewed medical journals. Her work was recently highlighted in a National Academy of Sciences report, "Branches of the Same Tree."

Students' Names

Alysse Alejandro

Cachae Alford

Alina Alvarez

Daphne Blessing

Vidya Narine

Mimi Diep

Lucia Girado

Tatyana Kornilova

Daniela Lopez

Sky Richards

Kristina Santana-Viera

Amber Singh

Ashley Somchanhmavong

Meghan Ta

Claire Tischuk

Keiaria Williams