RESURRECTING DEAD HISTORY

How one Chicago artist is filling in the blanks of history and honoring the unidentified dead

Kathleen Gallo pictured at the International Museum of Surgical Science during her artist residency. Photography by Kathleen Gallo, courtesy of the International Museum of Surgical Science.

Most kids grow up obsessed with cartoons and new toys, but Kathleen Gallo took interest in human anatomy. She was enthralled by a Body Worlds museum exhibit in Milwaukee and wasn’t intimidated to be the only child there.

Instead of going to Disney World like other kids her age, Gallo went to Italy with her family to see the remains of Pompeii after doing research on the eruption.

“It’s what she loved. And when you have a kid, you want to encourage what they love and you want them to be happy regardless of what they choose to do,” says Jamie Gallo, Kathleen’s mother.

Gallo, now 22, aims to give humanity and justice back to unidentified deceased people through forensic art. She reconstructs the remains of these people based on their unique bone structure. Gallo has done this in the form of clay sculptures and also works on 3D printed copies, or casts, of the original skulls.

Gallo was the spring 2021 artist-in-residence at the International Museum of Surgical Science. The museum is committed to the history of surgery and has a permanent collection of art and artifacts from the University of Chicago’s History of Science and Medicine archives.

“I’ve been doing a lot of work to just try to re-humanize people because I feel like a lot of the people I’ve come into touch with in my career have lost that through the scientific or anthropological community,” says Gallo.

“I'm very passionate about teaching anatomy and anthropology because I think a lot of the problems we have today stem from inaccurate lessons through anatomy and science in the past,” she says.

Gallo also took part in research with the Pima County Police Department, identifying the remains of a man who died of exposure in the Arizona desert, during a border crossing. This reconstruction was in the form of a side-by-side photo of what he looked like vs. Gallo’s clay sculpture.

“We’re connected through millions of years,” says Jamie Gallo. “And I think what’s fascinating is that you give a face to the faceless. That, to me, is extraordinary and beautiful in its own right, and dammit, it’s just interesting.”

Miranda Pettengill, an early-childhood museum educator, was Gallo’s collaborator when she completed her residency at the museum.

“It's been really fun to see Kathleen’s work evolve as time has gone on,” says Pettengill. “She has been producing a lot recently and asked me if she can expand to more galleries, which we determined right before I left.”

For Pettengill, the International Museum of Surgical Science is important because it binds all humans together being that we all exist in a body.

“It’s easy to look at a shelf full of skulls and not think about them very hard,” says Pettengill. “But her work asks us to humanize them in our own minds and have us think about [how] this person was a father, a brother, [or] a son.”

Gallo’s clay sculpture facial reconstruction of a man who died of exposure in an Arizona desert (top) and a facial reconstruction of a Liberian man killed in Africa around the 1850s (bottom). Photography by and courtesy of Marianna Koonce.

To learn more about Kathleen Gallo and her work, visit kathleengallo.com