Spine (unframed) Photograph

Impermanence is a concept Santin has worked with over the years. Life is precious precisely because it is fleeting and impermanent. X-ray films have appeared in Santin’s collages since 2008 and her fascination continues in this new body of work. Radiology department equipment such as MRIs, CT scans and X-rays record moments in time deep within the flesh and Santin finds the results almost magical. The work, 'spine' is a result of a residency at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and Adelaide Festival Fringe, 2022. “An orthopaedic surgeon and friend once told me that MRI and X-ray are just tools, but I see something more poetic than that. The revelations these machines capture, talk of intangible temporal spaces, something beneath the skin’s surface. The films give me the material to digitally mess with that space between being and nothingness”. Normally, a patient will only be shown the relevant stills of an MRI and will rarely see their own MRI in total: from entry point to exit point. Santin had an opportunity to see her own MRI in full, which has produced a filmic set of images she has used for her own digital manipulation. The MRI was taken in 2020, if was done again today, the body would have changed and the results would be different. Moments, similar to a family gathering, holiday snapshot or selfie.