What influences or determines our sense of who we are? What makes one person different from another? How does science inform human identity?
Identity exhibition, Benjamin Gilbert. Source: Wellcome Collection. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
This major exhibition explored the tension between the way we view ourselves and how others see us. ‘Identity’ investigated nine individual stories within eight distinct rooms. One room began with the story of scientist Alec Jeffreys, who invented DNA fingerprinting; the diaries of Samuel Pepys introduced another; while self-portraiture was explored through the work of Jewish lesbian artist Claude Cahun, who survived the Nazi occupation of Jersey despite being sentenced to death for acts of resistance.