RM Visited “Field Hospital X”, An Art Exhibition For Silenced Voices
As BTS‘s resident art scholar, RM shares his museum travels with fans, introducing them to artists they may have never heard of.
While on vacation, RM checked out exhibitions in Europe, including Field Hospital X by Israeli artist and professor, Aya Ben Ron. Many of Aya Ben Ron’s works combine medical ethics and art. Field Hospital X is designed to look and function like a healthcare facility, where “silenced voices can be heard and injustices can be seen.”
It was originally conceived as a place to screen No Body, a video that combines the story of Aya Ben Ron’s own childhood trauma with the fairy tale “The Girl Without Hands” by The Brothers Grimm.
When visitors enter Field Hospital X, they become patients who admit themselves to seek healing through art. Each patient takes a queue number and waits in the Reception Area. When their number is called, they go to the reception desk and choose a Risk-Wristband.
After the wait is over, patients choose one of four videos: gender transition (by Roey Victoria Heifetz and Zohar Melinek Ezra), institutional child abduction (by Idit Avrahami), abuse within a family (by Aya Ben Ron), or the resistance of a Palestinian artist (by Anonymous Palestinian).
Since RM is carrying these “Habit” Care-Kit vouchers, he most-likely viewed the “Habit” video by Anonymous Palestinian.
Habit is the personal resistance of an anonymous Palestinian artist to the Israeli occupation. He refuses to collaborate with the roles assigned to him as a Palestinian person under Israeli occupation, and demystifies the familiar image of Palestinian heroism or victimhood. He cannot identify himself because of the danger of being harmed and yet his act becomes a tool to restore his human agency.
— Habit description, Field Hospital X official website
After watching a video, the patient moves to the Safe-Area Unit, where an unseen guide instructs them to shout three times. RM followed these instructions very well!
The wristband RM wears has the Field Hospital X’s slogan, “Here Anyone Can Live Free”. The exhibition gives “patients” a safe place to talk about the traumas and social injustices they’ve faced in their own lives.
Check out RM’s vlog here: