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the state's gaze — medical research bias

artist statement & legend

about

This work makes visible what medical research systematically ignores. Six live paintings pull data daily from clinicaltrials.gov — the global registry of clinical studies — and repaint themselves when the numbers change. Each panel represents a different form of bias encoded into the body of medical knowledge. The paintings are not static. Neither is the erasure.

what the colours mean
PinkThe female body as it exists — present, alive, and largely unstudied.
Magenta / PurpleThe body under institutional pressure — visible but distorted, seen only through the lens of the system that classifies it.
BlueClinical distance. The cold, administrative gaze of the state and the research institution.
YellowWarning. The gap between what is known and what is studied. Data that signals without being heard.
GreenReproduction — the only lens through which female bodies have historically been considered worth studying.
BlackErasure. Void. Refusal. What is not researched, not funded, not asked.
WhiteThe assumed default. The unmarked male body that medical science built itself around.
what each painting means
I. The Default Body

Cardiovascular research was built on male physiology. For decades, the classic symptoms of a heart attack — chest pain radiating to the left arm — were defined by male presentation. Women's symptoms differ: jaw pain, nausea, fatigue. As a result, women are diagnosed later, treated less aggressively, and die more often from heart attacks than men with the same condition.

data source: cardiovascular trials recruiting, male-defaulted — clinicaltrials.gov
II. The Pain Gap

Women's pain is systematically undertreated and disbelieved. Studies show women wait longer than men to receive pain medication in emergency rooms. They are more likely to be told their pain is psychological, emotional, or exaggerated. The research that could close this gap is sparse.

data source: chronic pain trials recruiting — clinicaltrials.gov
III. Reproductive Reduction

When female bodies appear in medical research, it is most often in relation to pregnancy, fertility, or contraception. The body is studied not as a whole, but as a reproductive system. Everything else — cardiovascular health, neurological function, immune response — is secondary, or absent.

data source: pregnancy and female-only trials recruiting — clinicaltrials.gov
IV. The Exclusion

Women were formally excluded from clinical trials in the United States until 1993, when the NIH Revitalization Act mandated their inclusion. Before that, drugs, dosages, and treatments were tested almost exclusively on male bodies — then applied universally. The data gap from those decades persists in medical practice today.

data source: cancer trials recruiting, male-defaulted — clinicaltrials.gov
V. Diagnosis Delay

Autoimmune diseases affect approximately 80% women, yet remain poorly understood and chronically underfunded. Conditions like lupus, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis take an average of 4.6 years to diagnose in women — years spent being dismissed, misdiagnosed, or told the symptoms are stress-related.

data source: autoimmune trials recruiting — clinicaltrials.gov
VI. The Void

Endometriosis affects approximately 1 in 10 women globally — around 190 million people. It takes an average of 7 to 10 years to receive a diagnosis. Research funding remains critically and disproportionately low. This panel is the darkest. It updates the least. The data does not change because the research does not grow.

data source: endometriosis trials recruiting — clinicaltrials.gov
data

All trial counts are fetched live from clinicaltrials.gov via their public API. The paintings repaint only when the numbers change. The bias level of each painting — how much black cuts through the color, how fragmented the strokes — is calculated directly from the data. More exclusion, more erasure. More research, more light.