Foetus: four figures. Pen and ink drawing by Joyce Cutler Shaw, 1993.

[San Diego, California], 1993.

1 drawing : pen and ink on cotton ; cotton 110 x 146 cm

₅ 1993 Joyce Cutler Shaw Lettering on back: "Ultrasonically a fetus, cast as disconnected, is projected onto screens and scanned as though it floated free. Prophetic age when embryos are growing in a dish. Yet here we are still rehearsing genesis, still harboring in our body waters and body salts a remnant all of the first primeval birth in a primeval sea. ₅1993 JCS" Lettering on right shoulder: "I am what is around me", Wallace Stevens said." On right hem: "No woman, why, in pictures ... anagrams, even medical films of birth, only orifice, or boundless containing space, as if the fetus could evolve itself."

Drawn on the front of a white laboratory coat, with inscriptions on the front and back. Created as part of a group of drawings called "The anatomy lesson" executed by Joyce Cutler Shaw while artist in residence at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine, 1992-1994

Joyce Cutler Shaw, 'The anatomy lesson: the body, technology and empathy', Leonardo, 1994, 27: 29-38

Wellcome Collection 43768i

Copyright Joyce Cutler Shaw 1993. The copyright holder has granted a licence to the Wellcome Trust to reproduce the work under certain circumstances