Brian Keeley – Visual artist and heart transplant recipient

From the Old Brewery

Brian Keeley is a final year PhD student within the Dept. of Film & Visual Culture of the University of Aberdeen. His research focusses on portrayals of heart transplantation in contemporary art and visual culture. Brian’s thesis is practice-based and draws upon his own experience as a visual artist and filmmaker, and as a heart transplant recipient. Despite being a standard procedure to treat end-stage heart failure for more than half a century, heart transplantation has a cultural legacy which pre-dates modern medical science, and is therefore based on superstition and fascination. This is still reflected in films, for example, which typically depict narratives around heart transplantation in fantastical ways - through science-fiction, horror, or bio-sentimentality. Storylines focus on supernatural or implausible donor-recipient relationships, and research suggests that such portrayals are harmful to public attitudes to organ donation and transplantation. Contemporary visual art - and related academic research – is often concerned with conceptual notions of identity and altered corporeality. High-profile art exhibitions themed around heart transplantation are almost exclusively presented from non-experiential perspectives, excluding voices of those with the lived experience. The result is a denial of the reality of what is a chronic, and life-changing medical condition, in favour of speculative or metaphorical concepts. Brian Keeley’s research argues that persistent cultural misrepresentations and stereotypes of heart transplantation would be deemed inappropriate were they applied to people with other forms of corporeal difference, disabilities, or marginalised vulnerabilities. Link: Brian Keeley – The making of his 2016 artwork RENAISSANCE: https://briankeeley.wordpress.com/renaissance/