Sculptor: Hannah Honeywill
About the sculpture and photograph:
Atascadero is the name of a hospital in California, known in gay circles during the 1950s and 1960s as ‘the Dachau for queers’. Its ‘sexual retraining program’ of medical experimentation included lobotomies to cure homosexuality. The sculpture explicitly references an image from a section on Atascadero in the film Stonewall Uprising (dir. Kate Davis and David Heilbroner 2011) showing a man dressed in a smart white shirt, slumped beside a Victorian tea table, after medical intervention.
The photograph layers this with a reference to another image from the same film showing an interior in this institution, featuring strong light and shadow cast from gridded windows.
