Artist: Amira Mahamud
Year: 2015
Medium: Zine, featuring poetry and photography
Artist Statement: This zine is titled “reassurance seems to be late”, to reflect the history of psychiatric intuitionalism. Psychiatry as a knowledge system sees mental health as an issue of strictly science. In addition, it operates under the medical model where mental health is individualized and accountability is rarely placed on lack of resources in society. Reassurance to me means validation of ones struggle. For example, when anxiety is not validated there is only room to feel guilty or irresponsible. This idea can relate to the significance of experiential knowledge in Mad peoples history. Experiential knowledge comes sharing ones personal experience and reflecting on it (Beresford and Boxall, 2014, 71). By legitimating experiential knowledge it reduces the power of psychiatric knowledge (71). With this zine, I am hoping to contribute to interrupting dominant knowledge systems with personal narrative. Irit Shimrat’s book Call Me Crazy: Stories from the Mad Movement was the primary inspiration for this piece, specifically, the creative ways in which she shared her story. This book helped me revisit connections to mental health in a new way.