1 Elizabeth Stephens Australian Research Council Future Fellow Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities University of Queensland Conference Paper: “The Uses of the History of Science,” University of Queensland, September 2017 A Genealogy of Strangeness: Feminist Interventions in the Historiography of Science “Fat Venus” is the title of a multi‐media artwork currently in production by the artist and former anatomical prosector Nina Sellars. The project uses MRI technologies to produce an anatomical self‐portrait comprised only of the artist’s adipose tissue. A series of cross sections, like this one of Sellars’ thoracic region, reveal the lumens and traceries that only become visible once the organs of the body are removed, and these will eventually be assembled to reconstruct a whole‐body figure in 3D. In this respect, “Fat Venus” promises to provide an interesting and instructive complement to Justine Cooper’s 2005 video piece, “Rapt”, a much earlier instance of the use of MRI for the purposes of anatomical self‐portraiture. Where “Rapt” depicts the skeletal system, organs and flesh— that is, everything but the adipose tissue—“Fat Venus” will provide a stranger and less familiar image of the body, one composed entirely of fat—precisely that part of the body MRI technologies are usually used to erase. I am interested in the work of lab‐based artists like Sellars—and the field often referred to as sci‐art, or bioart—as part of the four year Future Fellowship project I am just beginning, which will examine the role of collaboration between the arts and sciences in the context of a long history of the experiment. In this