Pinball Journey Through the Human Body

Ho Yan (Howie) Tsui is a Canadian visual artist, born in Hong Kong (1978) and raised in Nigeria and Thunder Bay (Ontario). A recent winner of the $5,000 emerging artist award from the Council of the Arts in Ottawa, Howie was asked to create a new medical themed work for an exhibition on the bicentennial of the War of 1812.

After researching the horrors of battlefield surgery inspiration struck as he realized that upon entering the body, a musketball rattles around similar to that of a pinball. He went on to re-theme a pinball machine showing a British soldier being shot by a musketball on the front glass panel. The playing surface shows the innards of the soldier with the words "mangled viscera" at the center.

This is a pinball machine I'd love to play!

Howie Tsui: Friendly Fire is part of the exhibition Beyond the Battlefield: The World of 1812, in the Agnes Etherington Arts Centre at Queens University in Kingston now on through August 25, 2013.