Maya Lakshmi Srinivasan, MD

MFA Printmaking

Deep Cuts: Bearing Witness to the Erosion of Evidence, A Surgeon-Artist’s Record in Relief

In my Master of Fine Arts thesis in Printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design, I examine the intersection of my dual practices as a general surgery resident and artist. Both disciplines require precision, incision, and tactility to navigate the human condition. My art practice is a method of processing the emotional toll of surgical training and the simultaneous societal erosion of scientific authority. My thesis work focuses on challenging the rise of medical pseudoscience and anti-intellectualism.

The focal piece in this installation, In Tallow We Trust, consists of three woodblock relief prints at the scale of an operating table, creating a landscape for dissection and reflection. Through a developing codex of iconography that has spanned recent and current works—clogged vessels, broken syringes, disembodied hands—I satirize the dismantling of public health infrastructure, and the promotion of non-evidence based panaceas in America. By making and printing on handmade paper embedded with surgical remnants like gowns and sterile drapes, I physically bridge the gap between studio and operating theater.

Left Brain, Right Brain: A Viral Mind, is a wallpaper that serves as the backdrop for the installation, contextualizing these woodcut prints, employing geometric viral capsids juxtaposed to fluid brain contours to illustrate the tension and synergy between analytic and creative thought. By inviting the viewer to enter this Artist’s Operating Theater and look down upon these prints laid out on the table as a surgeon looks down on their operative field, I invite viewers to confront the absurdity of modern health discourse through the rhythmic, honest ritual of relief.