Art That Heals: The Image as Medicine in Ethiopia will introduce the American public to the boldly graphic healing scrolls of Ethiopia, which challenge traditional definitions of art and its potential. The West has historically treated art and medicine as separate, but in Ethiopia they are intimately linked. Ethiopian scrolls are not passive objects, but active forces; their power to heal believers demonstrates the interrelation of perception and aesthetics, art and the body. Drawing loans from public and private collections in the United States and France, Art That Heals will present approximately 60 works of art, many of which are used by clerics of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church to heal the sick. The exhibition includes parchment scrolls from the 18th to the 20th century, church frescoes from the 15th to the 20th century, processional crosses, drawings, codices, and icons. Additionally, the exhibition presents contemporary Ethiopian talismanic paintings which draw upon and further the aesthetic and conceptual legacy of Ethiopian healing scrolls.

4. Courtesy of the Museum for African Art, New York, New York

The parchment scrolls in the exhibition are exceptional for their artistic quality, visual impact, and the powerful ideas they embody. In Ethiopia, when a person is ill, he or she commissions a scroll. Using a complex iconographic system, a cleric paints arresting images and prayers on the scroll, which combat the forces causing illness. The images which appear on the scrolls range from religious symbols, the story of King Solomon, lions, birds, and abstract talismanic patterns to the most frequently depicted symbols, colorfully-rendered eyes. The patient looks fixedly at the scroll and enters a healing trance; by staring at the scroll, the patient is penetrated and cured through his or her eyes. Art That Heals presents Ethiopian scrolls and healing objects in a manner parallel to the Ethiopian process of healing: it treats the visitor as a patient going through successive stages of sickness, diagnosis, trance, and cure. An engaging installation strategy, using mirrors, large-scale photographs, and other interpretive devices, is of central importance to the exhibition and brings the Western viewer closer to the use and context of the scrolls.

Art That Heals is a timely and innovative exhibition, which examines a little-known and frequently misunderstood African culture while urging American viewers to think about the universal issues Ethiopian art addresses. What is our relationship to art? Are we only passive admirers of aestheticized objects, or might we be affected and changed by the objects we create and live with? Further, Art That Heals addresses issues of current concern in America: art and the body, health care, and the museum as a space of heightened visual awareness and receptivity. At a moment when the impact of AIDS has inspired contemporary artists to use the visual realm as a place of memorial, testimony, and spiritual healing, the Ethiopian tradition of healing scrolls provides an opportunity to reexamine the power and potential of art.