A Nigerian medical student went viral when he shared an illustration of a black pregnant woman.The image stirred up emotions as people realized they had never seen this kind of image of someone of colour. SciFair PhD student Gitte Samoy reflects on this ‘new’ insight. The viral image made something painfully clear: even in the twenty-first century, the medical field was still presenting the white body as the default. It not only revealed a lack of diversity in the medical field, but also demonstrated another point: although these images claim to be neutral recordings of reality, visualizing…

We meet PhD student Gitte Samoy in Berchem, in a basement full of strange objects and curiosities: wax heads with outward signs of syphilis and other skin diseases, models of pregnant women with exposed bellies, conjoined twins preserved in formaldehyde... Welcome to the Coolen family collection! Gitte is starting her research at the Science at the Fair project with the inventory of this special collection. Together with the team, she will study the role of travelling fairgrounds in spreading science, technology and visual culture. We are standing next to the wax portrait of a man with a…