The wellcome collection

Identity is a beautiful example of how we can perceive our everyday life can be dramatically different from even our closest friends. The show consists of, as it says on the advertisement eight rooms, each containing a story of a different perspective on life, whether that be from a scientific aspect, or social/emotional one. This concept of showing the viewer, in a very simplistic manner, that our idea of identity is most defiantly our own, and that identity isn’t just what we think of ourselves but what we think of others, and indeed of the human race on the whole. “What influences or determines our sense of who we are? What makes one person distinct from another? How does science inform human identity? This major new exhibition explores the tension between the way we view ourselves and how others see us.” http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/exhibitions/identity.aspx

On entering the gallery area we are confronted with a set of rudimentary built rooms, consisting of plywood walls on large metal wheeled frames. The simplicity of the outsides of the rooms aids the clinical sentiment of the space, and the Wellcome Collections overall ambiance. Placed between the rooms are various mirrors borrowed from collections such as Sigmund frauds’ a constant reminder of the way in which one views oneself, bringing home very much the sense of judgement.

As I moved from the first rooms I entered, which were concerned with the science of identity, and the forefathers of genetic theory and DNA, into rooms that had much more to do with the emotional side of identity (an odd statement to make I know) These later rooms dealt with prime examples of people who had been born into a body that they felt had nothing to do with their own actual identity. One that sticks in my mind particularly is the story of the first British person to undergo a full sex change; April Ashley, who travelled to Casablanca in 1960, and underwent the then experimental procedure, which rendered her a full blown woman. April Ashley became a media talking point, and helped to publicize the concept of peoples minds not necessarily matching up to the body they were in to this extreme extent.

To be continued…