Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice

2022 SALA Curtain Raiser presented in partnership with Montalvo Arts Center.

The COVID pandemic has placed health as a primary focus; Social Injustice is seen more clearly than ever before and can no longer ignore the changing climates. “Your body is part of a society inflamed,” write the authors in their book “Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice.”

Co-authors Dr. Rupa Mayra and Raj Patel as they share their latest work, a profoundly radical and intensively researched look at the cross-disciplinary links between the human body, the environment, and the injustices of our political and economic systems.

“Systems that were created to uphold the architecture of domination cannot simply be tweaked to become vessels of equity.”

Dr. Rupa Mayra

Dr. Rupa Marya is a physician, activist, writer, mother, and composer. She is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and a co-founder of the Do No Harm Coalition.

Her work sits at the nexus of climate, health, and racial justice, and she works to decolonize food and medicine. Dr. Marya is the co-author with Raj Patel of the book Inflamed:

Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice.

She has toured twenty-nine countries with her band, Rupa and the April Fishes, whose music was described by the legend Gil Scott-Heron as “Liberation Music.”

Raj Patel, is a controversial author, journalist, professor, and food policy expert Raj Patel continuously challenges our presumptions about the global economy with his work both as a policy analyst and activist. Having worked for some of the most prestigious international organizations —and protested against them—Patel constantly finds ways to improve the world’s food system.

Regularly featured in major international news publications and media, Patel’s cutting-edge thoughts on food distribution and globalization have become some of the most important and trusted in the world.

There will be opportunities to converse with the authors, and creators, whose work sits at the nexus of climate, health, and racial justice and a shared value in creating decolonizing food and medicine. This will be a conversation on the systemic effects of colonization on our health and the environment, followed by a Q&A with Dr. Mayra and Mr. Patel.

Art Forum SF is a not-for-profit that strives to define and promote all art forms emerging from South Asia and its diaspora. Art Forum provides a confluence for various art forms to develop and collaborate while retaining the identity yet relating to the global.