BEHIND THE SMILE Contemporary artist Vic McEwan talks to TCT Assistant Editor Sam Davies about how his use of 3D scanning and 3D printing is aiding research into facial nerve paralysis.
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guess there was a feeling of inadequacy, I always felt inadequate as a person. I think that’s very human, just very, unashamedly human. Where I used to see something wrong with that, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that anymore.” The voice is William’s and overlays pictures of his profile as a 3D scanning device flashes across an obscured face, half of which doesn't work. It remains still when he smiles or grimaces, laughs or cries. William’s face cannot absolutely communicate the things he’s feeling, or react to the things he sees, but he can talk. He opened up on his experiences as one living with facial nerve paralysis in a series of interviews with contemporary artist and researcher Vic McEwan, who in 2019 embarked on a project to not just tell the stories of those affected by the disability, but allow a small number of them to explore their medical condition in a new way. In March, hundreds of visitors to the Tate Liverpool museum in the UK heard William’s story. It was the first component of an interactive exhibit titled, ‘If They Spend the Time to Get to Know Me’ - a line lifted from William’s interview and a display that featured a 3D printed replica of his face. Getting to know William, his experiences and the condition that affects 1.5% of people at some point in their lives, was part of McEwan’s aim. He had teamed up with the Sydney Facial Nerve Clinic
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in his native Australia, observing the treatment given to patients, before opening up a dialogue to understand more about the emotional and physical experiences and then getting creative. Performative art, visual pieces and video work have all been strings to the McEwan bow as his work continues. Becoming the first contemporary artist to be accepted into the Department of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney, McEwan is one in an emerging field of arts practice-led PhD researchers looking to use art to enable ‘knowledge production’. What this entails is everything you’d expect of a traditional thesis – being transparent with the methodologies, articulating the background of the field and detailing important considerations like, for example, the anatomy of the face – while also presenting a body of work through exhibitions, which will also be examined. “Embodied knowledge,” McEwan calls it. “So much rich information, and what a more standard researcher might call data, has been drawn from that experience at the Tate.” McEwan’s goal is to explore the effects of facial nerve paralysis in a deeper way. While acknowledging the science of the condition – that when damaged or inflamed the face’s five nerve branches can lose function and reduce the ability for brows, eyelids, cheeks and lips to move – McEwan has sought to determine the impact those
