Projects from the Broad Institute > Inscription drawings

In 2016, while working as the Artist-in-Residence at the Broad, I was tracing magic spells from a copy of The Edwin Smith Papyrus, which is the earliest known surgical treatise on trauma from around 1,600 BCE in ancient Egypt. I was fascinated with letters that I could not understand. These words held some meanings and they were to treat illnesses as a legitimate treatment.

What I learned from the time I spent at the Broad was that discovery is not the end of a research project, but a new beginning with a set of new questions. Exploration never cease.

I included a quote from T.S. Eliot’s poem entitled "Little Gidding" in the last panel of this series, though it’s not easy to read because the lines were layered with mirror image. This quote was used as the ending of a scientific paper entitled The Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome, which was published in 2001, a year after the draft genome sequence was completed. The Human Genome Project was completed in 2003 and it launched a new era in biomedicine. The quote from T.S. Eliot’s poem resonates with this notion that we keep exploring, and was appropriately used as the end remark on this milestone scientific paper:

“We shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.”

Each of my project also begins with a process of discovery—observing, gathering data, researching, and experimenting. Artists, like scientists, keep exploring endlessly.

The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard is where many scientists work to discover the root causes of common and rare diseases, and to develop safe and effective therapeutic interventions using the cutting-edge technologies and tools. This work is now a part of the permanent collections and being exhibited at the Broad Institute.

Updated in 2026


Read more about The Edwin Smith Papyrus below.

The Edwin Smith Papyrus was the earliest known medical document that included prognosis for the first time in recorded history. It showed the high level of medical knowledge with detailed procedures, but not without some magic. Magic spells were included as a legitimate treatment, but most of them were written on the verso and mostly for terminal illnesses.

It also provided the earliest description of human tumor. It included several cases of tumors with visual and tactile characteristics such as hot and cold tumors. Prognosis given to patients with tumors was either “An ailment which I will contend” or "An ailment not to be treated,” and mostly regarded as incurable. Cancer, as I learned, is one of the oldest diseases ever described and studied in human history.


Sources:
Ades, Felipe, Konstantinos Tryfonidis, and Dimitrios Zardavas. 2017. “The Past and Future of Breast Cancer Treatment—from the Papyrus to Individualised Treatment Approaches.” Ecancermedicalscience 11: 746. https://doi.org/10.3332/ecancer.2017.746.

Breasted, James Henry. 1991. The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus : Published in Facsimile and Hieroglyphic Transliteration with Translation and Commentary in Two Volumes. Oriental Institute [of the University of Chicago].

Sanchez, Gonzalo M, Edmund S Meltzer, Edwin Smith, and W. Benson Harer. 2012. The Edwin Smith Papyrus: Updated Translation of the Trauma Treatise and Modern Medical Commentaries. Atlanta, Ga.: Lockwood Press.