In November 1850, Lewis Minor wrote to University of Virginia professor Dr. John Staige Davis, confirming a delivery was underway. Their letter discussed the clandestine trade of whiskey barrels filled with sawdust and contraband cadavers for anatomical studies— their correspondence referred to the unidentified, stolen remains as a "favorite article of trade." These bodies were often taken from burial grounds dedicated to the enternment of black, brown, and indigenous bodies as well as the remains of the poor, disabled, or unclaimed.

Launching from a photographic reprint of one of University of Virginia’s cadaver clubs. Supplemented by photographs, letters, and written records, this work hopes to converse on death, the body, social identity, and agency through the use of illstallation, alternative photographic processes, and the acrhive. These elements construct contemporary evidence.

The project questions the loss and gains of modernity and calls into question how we honor the legacy left behind by the duality of care when harm and healing cannot be separated from one another. The work draws a throughline to modern medical malpractice, connecting past and present abuses against the disenfranchised, enslaved, mad, and disabled. To root The Department of the Stolen Corporeal in community, the project will ultimately visualize its findings in an installation, ideally inside of the same medical institutions it examines.