Silent Anatomies

Monica Ong investigates cultural silences that shape the medical-emotional landscape of family diaspora, extending from China to the Philippines and North America. Her collection of image-poems juxtaposes diagram and diary, bearing witness to underrepresented histories of the body. Created as an ass [...]
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Monica Ong investigates cultural silences that shape the medical-emotional landscape of family diaspora, extending from China to the Philippines and North America. Her collection of image-poems juxtaposes diagram and diary, bearing witness to underrepresented histories of the body. Created as an assemblage of poetry, archive, and medical ephemera, it unpacks silence not only as the absence of language, but also as historical erasure, the loss of cultural memory, reconstructed truths, and ghosted identities. Writing in the voice of Medica, a daughter and witness, Ong questions the social hierarchies and gender roles of her upbringing, particularly their impact on women's health-seeking habits across generations. X-ray scans and anatomical drawings are rewritten to map identity and elegy, taking us to emotional landscapes in otherwise clinical spaces. Another series of apothecary bottles seeks to remedy anxieties about gender, race, and even mental illness, drawing from a fusion of multicultural folklore and belief.With this experimental debut, Ong invites readers into her complex lineage, much of it fading, with the remains collected here as documentation of nomadic heritage, resilience, and quiet devotion.