Ideas for this project began germinating more than twenty years ago, when the artist was undergoing pelvic floor biofeedback therapy and confronted the immense gaps in medical research concerning female anatomy.

Two decades later, after discovering a tumour in her left breast, she noticed a striking similarity between the ultrasound images of her breast and radar images of the surface of planet Venus. Christie began comparing her other medical images (ultrasound, MRI, and X‑rays) with additional astronomical images—radio telescope data from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and radar images from the Magellan spacecraft, which orbited Venus from 1990 to 1994. She observed that once identifying text was removed, it was sometimes difficult to distinguish which images came from inside her body and which came from outer space. This resonance between the cosmic and the internal, the macro and the micro, continued to call to her.

Études corporelles is a series of studies that merges astronomical images of celestial bodies with medical images of her internal organs. Research themes explored in this work include image‑making through sound waves and radio waves—via ultrasound and radar—as well as the electromagnetic similarities shared by celestial bodies and human bodies.