Dawn Hunter
South Carolina
Artist Statement Submitted 2015
1906 Nobel Laureate, Santiago Ramón y Cajal was the first person to demonstrate that the nervous system was made up of individual units/neurons that were independent of one another but linked together at points of functional contact called synapses. Cajal illustrated the results of his studies with elegant drawings.Through a cultivation of the uncanny, I facilitate a dialogue about his life within my new series of biographical portraits based on historical accounts, Cajal’s medical research, his artistically rendered anatomical drawings of the brain, and his little-known science fiction writings published under pseudonym, Dr. Bacteria. My portraits explore and synthesize his external public identity, his inner life as revealed in his autobiography, and his scientific drawings. I create images of Cajal that are inconsistent to mainstream circulation and knowledge. The lack of mainstream visual congruity within my drawings creates divergent content and concepts regarding Cajal.
