Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité, until May 2027
The exhibition Horizontal: Politics and Poetics from the Sickbed explores how perception and our relationship to the world are transformed when the bed becomes the centre of daily life. Bringing together historical objects and archival materials, contemporary artworks, activist perspectives, and stories of lived experience, the exhibition creates a dialogue that spans the nineteenth century to the present day. Through these diverse voices and materials, Horizontal presents the sickbed not only as a site of medical treatment, but also as a space in which some of the most pressing issues of our time come into view: participation, care, solidarity, and the conditions of rest in an increasingly exhausted society.
Horizontal is curated by Monika Ankele and Nora Heidorn. Ankele and Heidorn first connected through the Confabulations seminar series, and a book workshop for the edited collection Art and the Critical Medical Humanities (Johnstone, Morehead and Wiltshire, 2026).
Heidorn’s contribution to the Art and the Critical Medical Humanities volume is a visual essay entitled “Horizontal”, while Ankele, writing in dialogue with Angela Alves and Céline Kaiser, contributed the chapter “Lying In: A Conversation from the Bedside”.
The exhibition in Berlin also features work by several other contributors to Art and the Critical Medical Humanities, including Angela Alves and Liz Orton, highlighting the rich conversations and collaborations that emerged through the project.
