Glass Delusion by Paloma Proudfoot marks the artist’s first solo exhibition in Scotland and continues her exploration of the body and gendering of the voice.

The exhibition title references a rare psychiatric condition which emerged in the late Middle Ages as the use of glass became more widespread, where individuals believed their bodies were made from glass. For Proudfoot, the condition becomes a metaphor for the conflict at the heart of medical inquiry and technological progress: the more that is revealed about the internal workings of the body and mind, the more aware of our fragility we become. To be made of glass, one would finally be able to see all that the skin hides while being rendered unbearably fragile, unable to truly live for perpetual fear of shattering.

The central frieze at the heart of the exhibition explores this contradiction, depicting processes and traditions that untap or channel feelings ordinarily hidden: through hypnotism, lamenting singers, and artistic process. Glass Delusion is the latest work in an ongoing series exploring the practices of nineteenth-century French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot who used hypnosis to study ‘hysteria’ in women. It reimagines the 1887 painting A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière by André Brouillet, which depicts the famed neurologist giving a demonstration to his male students. The female patient in the painting, Marie Wittman, is hypnotised and collapsed in Charcot’s arms, her loss of autonomy in this induced state presented as an x-ray into the subconscious and used to perform symptoms of ‘hysteria’.

Proudfoot’s frieze replaces the male students and neurologists of the 1887 scene with contemporary female and non-binary figures. The vulnerability of the figures is revealed, yet a strength through their communion is evoked. Arranged in three parts, each section offers a different response to the original painting. On the right, Glass Delusion (A Clinical Lesson), shows a hypnotised woman now held by female practitioners; in the central section, Glass Delusion (Lament), Charcot’s audience is replaced by a choir in lament; on the left Glass Delusion (Dissection), an artist works on a painting of a lily.

The ceramic singers extend Proudfoot’s exploration of the female voice, and in particular her interest in the ancient Gaelic tradition of keening. Practised in Ireland and the northwest islands of Scotland, but now virtually extinct, keening was a ritualised mourning mostly performed by women which involved wailing and singing to express grief. The small choir in Glass Delusion (Lament) sing proudly, projecting through their communal voice, the suppressed inner grief of a community. Here sound is an expression of agency, in strong contrast to the man-made isolating sound of the tuning fork and gong which Charcot used to induce hypnosis.

The painting of a lily, Glass Delusion (Dissection), references and reworks the anatomical study of an inert hypnotised woman which appears on the back wall of the lecture theatre in Brouillet’s original painting. Proudfoot has included lily flowers in several recent works, drawn to their complexity as emblems of purity and innocence, but also regularly associated with death and mourning.

In the two bronze sculptures shown on plinths, Keener (II) and Keener (III), the lily becomes the visual expression of the vocalisation of grief: emerging from a female mouth, its trumpet shape suggests an arc of sound, giving voice to the lament.

Proudfoot has a background in textiles, and often applies dressmaking techniques to the malleable medium of clay. Using tailors’ patterned paper to measure and draw each object and figure, Proudfoot then creates a template to build them in clay. The outcome is a stylised combination of both flat and three-dimensional figures.

Another tool of dressmaking, the mannequin, appears regularly in her work, referencing how female patients at Salpêtrière were treated as if like puppets, malleable to the direction of the male doctors. On occasion, Charcot even went as far as to attach feathers to patients to amplify their tremors - a practice referenced in the feathered fingers shown in Glass Delusion (A Clinical Lesson). In the corner of the gallery, the torso of a ceramic mannequin hangs lifeless like a puppet waiting to be brought to life. The same mannequin features in the work Doublespeak, which captures, in a slight touch of hands, a tender exchange between human and mannequin. The work immortalises a performance developed with long-term collaborator, Aniela Piasecka, in which the artist activated the mannequin.

Proudfoot and Piasecka will revisit this collaboration on Friday 22 May. In a special performance of Lay Figure, Piasecka will move the creaking limbs of the mannequin as if a second body, to an arresting new score by musician Ailie Ormston.