Wenyi Pan
“Anatomy Lecture”
On-site Participatory and Performative Installation Project
with an Archival Film (2-channel) developed through it
2025-26, 35 hours on site (Nov, 2025)
Supported by Anatomy Lecture Theatre, Summerhall, Edinburgh
On architectural structure, institutional power, spectatorship, observation ...
On East Asian female bodies, self-surveillance, changing materials, faceless, unsettled ...
Project Context:
The Anatomy Lecture Theatre at Summerhall was originally built in the early twentieth century as a veterinary dissection room for the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies. It is a typical circular / semi-circular stepped anatomy theatre: curved wooden tiers rising gradually around a central area for the dissecting table and lecturer, lit from above by a domed ceiling and skylights. This architecture is designed to position students “above” the body in the centre, watching in a ring. The space itself organises sightlines, bodies and roles, producing a specific relation between knowledge, the body and power. It is now recognised as the last surviving example of this traditional type of anatomy theatre in a British veterinary school, and therefore carries significant architectural and medical-educational historical value. At the same time, it holds a dense history of discipline, classification and the management of life.
This project approaches that original structure from the perspective of female embodiment and the collective experiences that are under misogynistic social conditions. When the space is engaged through the lens of East Asian female experience and bodily imagination, its status as a historically European anatomy theatre becomes unsettled. A subject that has long been othered, regulated and silenced in its own context enters a room originally designed to look at and interpret “other” bodies. In this encounter, the question of who has the authority to dissect whom, and who is authorised to speak as knowledge, becomes unstable. The traditional triangle of teacher / object / student is reconfigured as institution / suppressed body-narratives / audience. Viewers are implicated in this configuration rather than remaining detached observers.
The work is designed to operate through the intersection of space/architecture, performance and material. Materials, bodies, narratives and modes of placement are allowed to interrelate, rather than being neatly separated into “background”, “prop” or “subject”. Minimal material interventions, the movement of the body between the seating and the central floor, and the distribution of text and sound within the room gradually blur the lines between “stage” and “auditorium”, between those who look and those who are looked at. Through ongoing shifts of position and relation, the Anatomy Lecture Theatre is treated not as a fixed machine for one-way observation, but as a historical apparatus that can be fictioned otherwise – a structure within which it becomes possible to ask who can speak, who is seen, and who may refuse to be seen.
Participants — East Asian women, mostly Chinese — are invited to interact with the site’s materials and architecture: upon entry they join the artist in wearing ceramic masks for one minute to sense the present, then continue freely without intervention. Each performance leaves its traces for the next.
The Anatomy Lecture Theatre at Summerhall was originally built in the early twentieth century as a veterinary dissection room for the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies. It is a typical circular / semi-circular stepped anatomy theatre: curved wooden tiers rising gradually around a central area for the dissecting table and lecturer, lit from above by a domed ceiling and skylights. This architecture is designed to position students “above” the body in the centre, watching in a ring. The space itself organises sightlines, bodies and roles, producing a specific relation between knowledge, the body and power. It is now recognised as the last surviving example of this traditional type of anatomy theatre in a British veterinary school, and therefore carries significant architectural and medical-educational historical value. At the same time, it holds a dense history of discipline, classification and the management of life.
This project approaches that original structure from the perspective of female embodiment and the collective experiences that are under misogynistic social conditions. When the space is engaged through the lens of East Asian female experience and bodily imagination, its status as a historically European anatomy theatre becomes unsettled. A subject that has long been othered, regulated and silenced in its own context enters a room originally designed to look at and interpret “other” bodies. In this encounter, the question of who has the authority to dissect whom, and who is authorised to speak as knowledge, becomes unstable. The traditional triangle of teacher / object / student is reconfigured as institution / suppressed body-narratives / audience. Viewers are implicated in this configuration rather than remaining detached observers.
The work is designed to operate through the intersection of space/architecture, performance and material. Materials, bodies, narratives and modes of placement are allowed to interrelate, rather than being neatly separated into “background”, “prop” or “subject”. Minimal material interventions, the movement of the body between the seating and the central floor, and the distribution of text and sound within the room gradually blur the lines between “stage” and “auditorium”, between those who look and those who are looked at. Through ongoing shifts of position and relation, the Anatomy Lecture Theatre is treated not as a fixed machine for one-way observation, but as a historical apparatus that can be fictioned otherwise – a structure within which it becomes possible to ask who can speak, who is seen, and who may refuse to be seen.
Participants — East Asian women, mostly Chinese — are invited to interact with the site’s materials and architecture: upon entry they join the artist in wearing ceramic masks for one minute to sense the present, then continue freely without intervention. Each performance leaves its traces for the next.
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