Lodestone exhibits our complex encounters with medicine in way that is inviting, wonderous, and enchanting. Lodestones are naturally occurring magnets, a near-magical phenomenon that was eventually harnessed within biomedical imaging technologies like MRI machines

Lodestone does not necessarily depict a happy ending, but a constant state of journeying and becoming. It is vital to introduce more complex and unsatisfying narratives of illness into our
society. Neither triumphant nor tragic, illness and disability are typical and valid ways of moving through the world. Presented as colorful and surreal prints with a hint of lore, I aim for this
exhibition to take up the visual and material culture of medicine and re-present them with affirming sensibilities that centre the patient perspective. Although this work represents the experiences of a single woman, opening the imagery through translations of printmaking makes space for anyone to relate to the tales within.

Dr. Darian Goldin Stahl is interdisciplinary printmaker working between topics of medicine, disability, and well-being. Her work is based on the lived experiences of her collaborating partner and sister, Devan Stahl, as well as her own recent experiences navigating healthcare systems while pursuing parenthood. Darian is a printmaking instructor at the University of British Columbia Okanagan in Kelowna, where she lives and works on the unceded traditional lands of the Syilx peoples. She is also a Research Associate at the National Collaborating Centre for Indigenous Health. This unconventional mix of employment demonstrates her commitment to championing those who have been marginalized and othered in Western medical systems through advocacy, research, and art.

After attaining a BFA in Printmaking from Indiana University Bloomington and an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Alberta  that both engaged healthcare topics, she then went on to achieve a research-creation PhD in Humanities from Concordia University in 2021 that investigated how artists’ books become multi-sensory archives of illness and disability. This work awarded Darian a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship at the UNBC Northern Medical Program and Health Arts Research Centre, where she works with patient groups to create artists’ books about their lived experiences within healthcare systems. Darian has exhibited her work all around the world, but her most notable achievement was the acquirement of her entire suite of artist’s books by the acclaimed medical art institution, the Wellcome Collection in London, where her books continue to evoke health discourses with public audiences.