“The doctor studies the body to improve its fate; the artist to improve its spirit.”
Davey Jose explores spinal cord injury, surgery and bodily difference through oil painting, digital and immersive media.
Medical imagery becomes internal self-portraiture. Familiar portraits from art history are reimagined through the lived experience of disability.
The Cure imagines a future where technologies such as brain-computer interfaces have made spinal injury a thing of the past. From that future, the paintings look back on the disruptive realities of these injuries. The title also suggests art itself as a cure for the human condition.
His exhibitions and talks have spanned institutions including Tate Modern, the National Gallery, the British Library and the National Spinal Injuries Centre, Stoke Mandeville. The series has also expanded into an award-winning VR film. His work was profiled in a BBC documentary connected with the Royal Academy of Arts.
Recent exhibition
The Cure at the World Tetrahand Congress 2026
21–23 September 2026 · Waterside Theatre, Aylesbury, Bucks
A viewer’s response to the series
“The work seems so universal about the human condition”
About the series
Davey has lived with a spinal injury since being run over by a car at 2.8 years old. Over the last decade, his art practice has increasingly focused on spinal cord injury and disability, developing into a body of work titled The Cure. Medicine and art share a history going back hundreds of years; the series draws on that interplay while infusing anatomy with lived experience.
Titles across the series give the medical imagery a personal, sometimes playful voice. Life After Paralysis Can Be Confusing, But 100% Possible acknowledges uncertainty while affirming the possibility of a fulfilling life after injury. Tracheostomy Gives Her Life highlights life-sustaining care, while Supporting Lisa plays on the Mona Lisa, reimagining her with the body braces and hand splints that provide physical support.
Close Encounters of the Tracheostomy Kind brings humour to an experience often described only in clinical terms. Through these titles, Davey expresses hope without overlooking the difficulties of spinal injury, and encourages viewers to recognise and embrace bodily difference.
Davey's influences are wide-ranging. For The Cure, particular reference points include Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical studies and Jean-Michel Basquiat's relationship with Gray's Anatomy, given to him by his mother while recovering after being hit by a car aged seven. His practice has also been informed by Francis Bacon, Henri Matisse, Frida Kahlo, Mark Rothko, H. R. Giger and Nam June Paik, whose pioneering use of technology has particular resonance with Davey's digital and immersive work.
In 2019, the 500th anniversary of Leonardo's death, Davey exhibited work and joined the British Library's Art/Science of the Polymath event.
Antony Gormley is another influence, particularly in his exploration of the human body, physical presence and space through sculpture. His treatment of the body resonates with Davey's own interest in embodiment, disability and spinal injury. There is also a connection through Trinity College, Cambridge, where Gormley studied from 1968 to 1971 and Davey studied three decades later; Davey later met him at a Trinity private view during his 2019 Royal Academy exhibition.
PART I
The first part of the series looks at the body from within, focusing on the spinal cord and other organs affected by spinal injury. Drawing on Davey’s own X-rays, scans and medical imagery from years of rehabilitation and ongoing clinical care, these works turn clinical images into a form of internal self-portraiture, while also reflecting his interest in Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical studies.
“Davey paints damaged spinal cords and organs with an unapologetic rawness.”
PART II
The second part reimagines familiar portraits from art history through disability and bodily difference. Frida Kahlo’s paintings were one source of inspiration for this approach. Drawing on Davey’s own experience, the sitters are recast with braces, supports, wheelchairs, tracheostomy and other visual markers of spinal injury. The aim is not to make disability exceptional, but to place it naturally within images we already recognise.
“He playfully contrasts this with reimagined paintings of iconic portraits from art history…”
Viewer response
“I actually did my dissertation on communicating pain so your work has really struck a chord with me. You simultaneously convey the shared aspects of disability alongside the deeply unique tangents we experience alone.”
Art can challenge how we think as well as how we see. For Davey, The Cure is a deliberately provocative title. He does not believe disabled people need to be cured. A disabled life is valuable, and inclusion should never depend on changing someone’s body. Wanting treatment for spinal injury and its complications is compatible with demanding an accessible society.
The medical model understands disability primarily through an individual’s impairment or condition. The social model identifies the barriers that disable people, including inaccessible design, inadequate funding and support, and exclusionary attitudes. Davey’s work acknowledges both these barriers and the physical realities of his injury.
Growing up with a spinal injury understood as incurable, he learnt to adapt through rehabilitation while managing consequences far beyond mobility. These can affect breathing, bladder and bowel function, skin and blood pressure. Often unseen, complications can become life-threatening. Having lost friends to them, his interest in treatment is deeply personal: fewer medical crises and greater freedom to live.
The paintings began as Living with Spinal Cord Injury. Their later transformation into a VR film drew on Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art, an exhibition Davey visited at the Barbican in 2008. Its imagined extraterrestrial curators interpreted human art from an unfamiliar perspective. The idea stayed with him.
Years later, science fiction and emerging spinal research gave that idea a new setting. In The Cure, future curators inhabit a world where spinal injuries can be repaired. They look back through his paintings to understand what living with such an injury felt like, much as we consider life before antibiotics, when an infection now treatable could prove fatal.
Stephen Hawking advised Davey about applying to Cambridge as a teenager. They met several times during his university years, and Davey attended Hawking’s 60th birthday symposium. Hawking later said:
“Medicine has not been able to cure me, so I rely on technology to help me communicate and live.”
Those words resonate with Davey: technology can expand what is possible today, alongside research into future treatments. Society’s responsibility to provide access and support remains.
The Cure has a second meaning, equally important to Davey as the possibility of treating spinal injury: art itself as a cure for the human condition. The opening quotation from Human Anatomy: Depicting the Body from the Renaissance to Today connects medicine’s care for the body with art’s care for the spirit. For Davey, art helps us make sense of our experiences, recognise ourselves in others and find connection, sustaining and restoring something within us.
Immersive media
The Cure is a VR short film set in the year 3000, presenting Davey’s paintings as a future exhibition about life with spinal cord injury.
The work was adapted into VR to extend the exhibition beyond the physical gallery, particularly for people for whom travel, mobility or health can make visiting exhibitions difficult. It can also be experienced on mobile, tablet, PC and smart TV.
The Cure was shortlisted for the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition in 2020. COVID-19 restrictions prevented the VR film from being presented on a headset.
Viewer response to The Cure VR short film
“Fantastic. The movement from your story into the wider history of art”
Winner, Best VR Film
London Short Series Festival
Winner, VR Film
Druk International Film Festival, Bhutan
Official Selection
Bucheon International Animation Festival, Korea
Official Selection
Tbilisi International Animation Festival, Georgia
Official Selection
Philip K. Dick SF Film Festival, MoMI New York
Shortlisted - VR film
Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition
Watch · Listen
Podcast · Stewarts Soundbites · 13 April 2022
Davey discusses disability, education, creativity and the therapeutic power of art with Stewarts Law.
VR 360 · Short film
The award-winning VR short film built from the 18-canvas series, set in a future where the cure for spinal cord injury exists. Drag or tilt to look around in 360°.
BBC Two · October 2020
A BBC profile of Davey Jose and his work, filmed in connection with the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2020.
Trinity College, Cambridge · Talk
Davey and his younger brother, mathematician and broadcaster Bobby Seagull, discuss disability, art and technology in a conversation for Trinity College, Cambridge. Having grown up alongside Davey’s spinal injury, Bobby brings a uniquely close perspective on the experiences behind the work.
Exhibitions, festivals & talks
From the National Spinal Injuries Centre, Stoke Mandeville, to Tate Modern, the National Gallery and film festivals in New York, Korea and Bhutan.
Sep 2026
The Cure - featured artist exhibition, World Tetrahand Congress 2026
Waterside Theatre, Aylesbury, UK
Aug 2024
Art talk and lecture
Centre for Differently Abled, Kerala, India
Jun 2024
Living with Spinal Cord Injury - artist talk, Friday Lates
The National Gallery, London, UK
Sep 2022
Painting exhibition and invited after-dinner speech, Annual Gathering
Trinity College, Cambridge, UK
Jul 2022
Artist talk and display, in conversation with Bobby Seagull
Tate Modern Lates, London, UK
May 2021
Art, disability and technology - in conversation with Bobby Seagull
Trinity College, Cambridge, UK · Online
Dec 2020
The Cure included in “The Top 5 online exhibitions to see over the festive season”
FAD Magazine, UK
Oct 2020
BBC Two artist profile on Davey Jose, the Living with Spinal Cord Injury paintings and their VR adaptation, The Cure, connected with the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2020
BBC Two, UK
Summer 2020
Four-page artist feature and portfolio, The Cure, in The Fountain
Trinity College, Cambridge, UK
Mar 2020
VR installation - Official Selection, Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival
Museum of the Moving Image, New York
Feb 2020
The Cure - physical and VR solo exhibition (one month)
HSBC headquarters, Canary Wharf, London
Nov 2019
Best VR Film - winner
London Short Series Festival, Covent Garden
Oct 2019
VR Film - winner
Druk International Film Festival, Bhutan
Oct 2019
Official Selection, VR Film category
Bucheon International Animation Festival, Korea
Oct 2019
Official Selection, VR short film
Tbilisi International Animation Festival, Georgia
Sep 2019
Solo display for “Art/Science of the Polymath”, celebrating 500 years of Leonardo da Vinci
The British Library, London
Jul 2019
Digital projections, group show with crypto and NFT artists
International Digital Arts Festival, Manchester
Apr–Jul 2019
Physical and virtual solo exhibition
National Spinal Injuries Centre, Stoke Mandeville, Aylesbury
From the exhibitions and talks
“Go, go, go!” [Audience cheering]
Davey films himself with the seated audience behind him. Audience members wave towards the camera and cheer in celebration.
During the daytime setup, two people position a painting on an easel beside the cloister windows. The camera pans left to show other paintings. The film then cuts to the evening, when blue and white lighting illuminates the exhibition and guests walk through the cloisters.
At the opening of Living with Spinal Cord Injury, patients and family members joined Davey to paint a shared canvas reimagining Matisse’s Icarus with wheelchair wheels. The falling figure reflects the upheaval of spinal injury, while the wheels suggest the possibilities of life after paralysis. Each person painted what they could reach, together creating a whole: a reflection of the community support that helps people rebuild their lives.
