Le rifain assis henri matisse biography
Henri matisse siblings.
In contrast to Orientalism’s reliance on imagining the ‘other,’ the study and practice of medicine depends on objective, evidence-based scientific reasoning.
Henri matisse sculpture
Yet, the delivery of healthcare and the clinical encounter are embedded with subjective interpretation, bias, and socioeconomically and culturally-determined notions of race. Physicians are often tasked with providing medical recommendations and treatment strategies weighted heavily by racial optics.
Social constructs, as opposed to innate, genetically determined risk factors, are frequently operationalized in a biomedical context, potentially driving patient outcomes and racialized health disparities. How can those in medical education, research, and clinical care recognize—as Matisse and other European artists in colonial Northern Africa were perhaps unable to—that their fields are inherently entwined with complex social and political contexts?
This thwarted “authenticity of representation”—of race as a biomedical enti