Infectious disease, however, offers a meeting point between species. Disease is not something discrete and of itself, but dependent on a relationship between a host and an organism in order to exist - evidence of an ongoing relationship of inter-speciation. Situated in the gallery between social history and natural history displays, the exhibition aimed to create a conceptual bridge between the two areas, making use of collections from the Iziko South African Museum and the Adler Medical Museum at Wits. It referenced plague-altars, zoonotics, pharmacopoeias, 'sites' of contamination and bestiaries, and presented an exploded view of science - suggesting interconnectivity between organisms, world-views, science and mythologies. The manner in which bio-medical and biological science is visually expressed is often linear and non-layered. This project borrowed from those languages, but, by using various curatorial strategies in a lattice of conceptual and visual cross-referencing, attempted to express information in a manner that allowed for a layered reading of the inter-relationships of species.
Fritha Langerman, at