London's Global Bitters Cabinet

Dr Ricardo Leizaola's multimedia exhibition London's Global Bitters Cabinet, funded by the Wellcome Trust, ran throughout November and December 2010.

Showcasing a collection of bitters, tinctures and lotions used and sold on the streets of London this multimedia installation explores London's diasporic traditions and current uses of plant-based alcoholic remedies.

Visual anthropologist and ethnobotanist Dr Ricardo Leizaola illustrates some of the intersections between and among nominally different ways of thinking about and displaying knowledge of plants. By experimenting with digital media this collection/installation explores aesthetic and social aspects of a botanical collection and its making.

It is conceptually located at the intersection of several disciplines such as botany (economic botany), pharmacology, anthropology (material culture, ethnobotany, medical anthropology, visual anthropology), and visual arts (collection display and installation). It may be simultaneously considered a botanical spirit collection, an apothecary display, a bar-bitter cabinet, a curiosity cabinet and an art installation. It brings together diverse cultural traditions hidden in domestic and informal areas of contemporary London by exploring the cross-cultural practice of bitter making.

See the review in prestigious medical journal The Lancet here.