Episode 18: The Forensic Artist
Dr. Kathryn Smith trained as a fine artist and won all the accolades. The world was at her feet. But a persistent fascination with forensic identification, fostered in childhood, meant that she was to make a new path, one that allowed her to walk into different worlds…
It’s an unlikely story, and a powerful one. A story of how someone’s skills, aptitude and sheer bravery helped her find an international community of researchers, artists, academics and police and justice officials at the intersection of art and science. A story of someone with unflinching curiosity and persistence, who treads through the world once more, into many places very few people go.
Dr. Smith is one of just two trained civilian forensic artists in Africa, based at the Visual Arts Dept. at Stellenbosch University. Her work is about identity, but runs much deeper than that: it’s about healing, and vital reparations for the vast numbers of unclaimed dead in Cape Town and elsewhere, and their families.
If art is about making meaning, powerful meaning is made here.
Visit:
VizLab (last tag, bottom right)
Sutherland Project (in The Conversation)
Other podcasts with Kathryn:
Trans Doe Project (Forensic Art Project in U.S.)
Arts Research Africa Dialogue (fine arts meets forensics)