Diagnosing the Simpsons


Artist: Adam Gualtieri
Year: 2015
Medium: Video
Artist Statement: This piece complicates the ways in which the popular satirical comedy “The Simpsons” represents and engages with issues of madness. Instead of seeing these representations of madness as harmless and hilarious, this piece encourages the viewer to become active users in the content that the media uses to shape a seemingly innocent storyline.

Blue and White

Artist:  Rachel Eddy
Year:  2014
Medium:  Audio
Artist Statement:  N/A

Audio Transcript:  Blue and White

Blue is the colour of being told you talk too much
Blue is the weight of never feeling good enough
Blue is chasing after the friend who’s giving up
Blue is the empty spaces undeserving of love
Blue is when your values are at war with your impulse
When you can’t get a grip on the ground you rely on
Blue is taking away the choice to walk, only run
Blue is the requirement of adrenaline to have fun.

White is the ability to constantly achieve straight A’s
White is the temporal snapshot of the answer on the page
White is being able to function without sleep for days
White is no one ever telling you “you don’t have what it takes”
White is somehow always being able to find time
White is the love of my life resting assured that he’s always on my mind
White is moving forward too quickly to ever fall behind
White is the sponge in my head being called “a beautiful mind.”

They tell me I’m angry, they tell me I’m anxious
Defeat knows that breathing will precipitate anguish
They tell me I’m broken; we don’t speak the same language
I say I’m battered by the ‘quick fixing’ masses
My world spins so quickly, all at once I see what was, is, and what could be
I begged for some mercy
Throw a blue and white cog in these gears and let my find rest.

Blue and white, these are the colours painting my peace of mind
Blue and white, upping the ante so the demons don’t chase me at night
Blue and white, these are the colours that keep me from losing my mind
Blue and white.

Now I’m Mad: A Rorschach Butterfly Collection of Self Portraits

Coloured butterfly rorschach  images printed over faces

Artist:  Alexis Jackson
Year:  2014
Medium:  Mixed Media
Artist Statement:  This is a collection of self portraits that have been carefully hand dyed in the style of Rorschach inkblot tests to resemble a butterfly collection. The project illustrates how psychiatrizion has, at times, complicated, obscured and been integrated into my personal and public identity.

Untitled

Straight jacket on hanger

Artist:  Tara Thompson
Year:  2014
Medium:  Crepe back satin and Burlap
Artist Statement:  This piece is all about the different perspectives of the straight jacket; from the outside and to society is looks like a pretty problem solver, but from the inside it’s made of burlap, which is itchy, uncomfortable, and hates by the wearer.

Taking Back the Crazy

Artist: Samantha Raphael
Year: 2014
Medium: Song
Artist Statement: I wrote the song “Taking Back the Crazy” in support of the Mad Pride Movement. The song discusses the necessity of reclaiming the language of Madness, the focal word being ‘Crazy’. If we cannot erase labels we can at least alter their connotations. I hope it’s catchy!

Untitled

Artist: Colleen Stark Year: 2014 Medium: Photograph Artist Statement: What does madness look like? Is it Yellow? Is it a straight line, or a chaotic blob of squiggles? For these nine individuals, this is what their madness looks like to them.

Artist: Colleen Stark Year: 2014 Medium: Photograph Artist Statement: What does madness look like? Is it Yellow? Is it a straight line, or a chaotic blob of squiggles? For these nine individuals, this is what their madness looks like to them.

Artist: Colleen Stark Year: 2014 Medium: Photograph Artist Statement: What does madness look like? Is it Yellow? Is it a straight line, or a chaotic blob of squiggles? For these nine individuals, this is what their madness looks like to them.

Artist: Colleen Stark Year: 2014 Medium: Photograph Artist Statement: What does madness look like? Is it Yellow? Is it a straight line, or a chaotic blob of squiggles? For these nine individuals, this is what their madness looks like to them.

Artist: Colleen Stark Year: 2014 Medium: Photograph Artist Statement: What does madness look like? Is it Yellow? Is it a straight line, or a chaotic blob of squiggles? For these nine individuals, this is what their madness looks like to them.

Artist: Colleen Stark Year: 2014 Medium: Photograph Artist Statement: What does madness look like? Is it Yellow? Is it a straight line, or a chaotic blob of squiggles? For these nine individuals, this is what their madness looks like to them.

Artist: Colleen Stark Year: 2014 Medium: Photograph Artist Statement: What does madness look like? Is it Yellow? Is it a straight line, or a chaotic blob of squiggles? For these nine individuals, this is what their madness looks like to them.

Artist: Colleen Stark Year: 2014 Medium: Photograph Artist Statement: What does madness look like? Is it Yellow? Is it a straight line, or a chaotic blob of squiggles? For these nine individuals, this is what their madness looks like to them.

Artist: Colleen Stark Year: 2014 Medium: Photograph Artist Statement: What does madness look like? Is it Yellow? Is it a straight line, or a chaotic blob of squiggles? For these nine individuals, this is what their madness looks like to them.

Artist: Colleen Stark
Year: 2014
Medium: Photograph
Artist Statement: What does madness look like? Is it Yellow? Is it a straight line, or a chaotic blob of squiggles? For these nine individuals, this is what their madness looks like to them.
www.colleenstark.com

Frailty

Artist: Meaghan Gable
Year: 2014
Medium: Experimental montage
Artist Statement: The piece “Frailty” explores the cultural assumptions made about women, specifically as they relate to popular accounts of madness. The piece incorporates representations of female characters labeled mad in the works of William Shakespeare.

Luna C and the Institutional Eyes

 

Three artboards

Artist: Amy Mackenzie
Year: 2015
Medium: Mixed media
Artist Statement: This work addresses anti-psychiatry sentiments and the progressive pathologization movements put forth by powerful authorities such as the APA and pharmaceutical companies. The pathologizing of human experiences is reaching a point of becoming more overtly ludicrous and reaping in disturbing amounts of money.

Madness and Creativity

Collage

Artist: Jessica Nicholson
Year: 2013
Medium: Collage and Painting
Artist Statement: There is an significant history behind the relationship of art and madness that is often left untold. I have chosen to represent this history visually using collage and painting methods on a long canvas. I was inspired by the story of Agnes’ jacket (Hornstein, 2009) and have decided to focus on the history of art in asylums.

Drowning in Shattered Lucidity

Acrylic painting

Artist: Dmitri Belenko
Year: 2013
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Artist Statement: This piece approaches madness from a perspective of lived experience. It depicts a connection from birth to death; this connections represents the hands of institutions of power, whether religious, social or medical. This narrative runs past the crumbling influence of asylums and other institutions, leading to the modern world, where a spark for change has led to a blaze, masking the struggle of the actual individual. This the piece critically reflects on the influence of social institutions over individual narratives and outcomes.

Eclat: Escaping the Psychiatric System

Photo of a man with caution tape

Photo of a woman and man with caution tape

Photo of a woman with caution tape

Photo of a woman and man with caution tape

Photo of a woman with caution tape

Photo of two women and a man with caution tape

Artist: Emily Lindsay
Year: 2013
Medium: Digital photographs
Artist Statement: This collection personifies the medical model and three main players involved in the process of being a psychiatric survivor. There is the doctor, and two psychiatric patients, who are trying to escape the system, one who succeeds and helps the other.

Puzzled

Various patches of fabric quilted together

Various patches of fabric quilted together

Artist: Oluwaseun (Seun) Senbore
Year: 2013
Medium: Quilted Fabric
Artist Statement: The construction of this quilt represents my attempt to understand and appreciate how different factors including intersectionality, stigma, and self-determinism work to shape the lived experience of an individual who identifies as mad.

Womb Rage!

Artist: Lara Harb
Year: 2013
Medium: Video
Artist Statement: This short film takes a satirical look at past patriarchal views of madness, specifically in reference to women. This documentary-style spoof describes a disease known as “womb rage” as well as the symptoms it presents in the patient and offers a recommended cure.

SURVIVOR

PDF cover with "SURVIVOR" text

Artist:  Cleo Peterson
Year:  2013
Medium:  Series of illustrated poems
Artist Statement:  SURVIVOR is a series of poems and illustrations that reflect current and past treatments of mental illness. It attaches a patient to a treatment to reinforce that real people had to endure these methods. Some died, while some lived, but they all survived. It is important we don’t allow this to be forgotten and strive to be better and do better when it comes to recognizing and treating mental illness.

SURVIVOR [PDF]

Bipolar Britney

Collage with images of Britney Spears' face over the course of her career

Artist: Nicole Kim
Year: 2012
Medium: Mixed Media
Artist Statement: This collage was inspired by the article “Making Bipolar Britney: Proliferating psychiatric diagnosis through tabloid media” by Jijian Voronka. Using found imagery, this piece demonstrates how celebrity behaviours are created by the media for public consumption. It emphasizes the dual madness of celebrity and media consumption.

Bob the sculpture

Sculpture of a character

Sculpture of a character

Sculpture of a character

Artist: Lisa Zhou
Year: 2012
Medium: Paper mache
Artist Statement: This paper mache sculpture named Bob symbolizes the idea of how quickly people label those that are seen as deviants of society with a type of mental illness. Bob’s two different sides represent the transition from the past with terms that stigmatize, to the present and future, where madness is increasingly medicalized.

Andy

Portrait illustration

Artist: Johnathan Harvey
Year: 2012
Medium: Oil and ink on canvas
Artist Statement: This is a portrait of my friend Andy. The painting depicts Andy two ways: the ink contours represent the social systems in which he is expected to fit, and the non-linear colours represents his deviance.

DSM-5 and the Medicalized Grief in Numbers

Digital informational image

Artist: Amber Hickson
Year: 2012
Medium: Digital Image
Artist Statement: The DSM-5 was released in May 2013 at the annual conference for the American Psychiatric Association. Some of the many changes that attracted considerable commentary have included the lowering of diagnostic thresholds and the medicalization of grief. This infographic artwork explores how symptoms of grief and major depression can appear somewhat similar; however, they represent differing long-term situations and treating them the same way will lead to increases in antidepressant prescription sales by blurring “distinctions between mental health and illness” (Tartakovsky).

Media BS: Cultural representations of madness

Coloured circles that form Britney Spear's face

Coloured circles that form the lower half of a face

Coloured circles. Some are blank, others have words

Artist: Katherine Yelland-Mitchell
Year: 2012
Medium: Ceramic on glass
Artist Statement: You have only gotten a piece of her. This piece is in reaction to the recent media coverage of Britney Spears and the medical model framework used to describe her mental health. It is intended to scrutinize the dominant psychiatric approach used by the media to explain her actions.

Compos Mentis

An illustration of a woman with a bomb strapped to her body with a book in her face and eyes in the background.

Artist: Stephanie Henderson
Year: 2011
Medium: Ink and colour pencil on paper
Artist Statement: This illustration portrays a mad woman surrounded by some of the negative aspects of the mental health system. Her pyjamas remind us of the subordination institutions often mandate. The background of bloodshot eyes demonstrates the concept of the panopticon, an open-concept architecture of modern asylums developed for constant surveillance. The copy of the DSM in the subject’s face symbolizes her loss of identity to her clinical diagnostic; the vest of empty pill bottles highlights the dangerous and self-destructive nature of popular psychoactive drugs.

A Fashion of the Mind

A dress  made of multiple different fabrics and patterns displayed on a manikin.

A dress  made of multiple different fabrics and patterns displayed on a manikin.

A drawing of a young woman on a piece of fabric.

A drawing of two hand holding each other on a piece of fabric

An illustration of a double sided head on a piece of fabric.

An illustration of a skeletal body on a piece of fabric.

An illustration of a dress on a girl.

Artist: Miranda Van Logerenberg
Year: 2011
Medium: Textile (dress) and conceptual drawing
Artist Statement: This piece is a theatrical costume that represents the structural and individual understandings of madness by psychiatry. The painted muslin pieces represent the social factors and structural responses to anxiety and depression, whereas the pills (buttons) represent the individual/medical responses.

Into the Blue

Blue and brown gradient with text painting on top.

Artist: Kayla Clark
Year: 2011
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Artist Statement: This painting brings to light issues and ideas from Ellen Hopkin’s book Impulse. The book follows the lives of three teens incarcerated in a mental health facility after trying to kill themselves. The colours represent the main character’s shifting emotional states and the quotes describe the experience of institutionalization.

Recovery

Artist: Jessica Devnani
Year:  2011
Medium:  Video, Mockumentary
Artist Statement: “Recovery” is a mockumentary intended to make a statement on the way mental illness is being diagnosed today.  The DSM-5 has been criticized for including a number of new mental disorders which seem like standard human behaviour.  The diseases that the patients on “Recovery” are suffering from may seem rather ridiculous, because they are part of being normal.  Normal behaviour should not be seen as a disease, and normal behaviour does not need to be medicated.

Wolf and Rabbit

Board game about a wolf and rabbit.

Board game about a wolf and rabbit.

Artist: Jeanine Middleton
Year: 2010
Medium: Board Game
Artist Statement: “The strong get stronger by devouring the weak…the rabbits accept their role in the ritual and recognize the wolf as the strong…he most certainly doesn’t challenge the wolf to combat. Now, would that be wise, would it?” Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1964)

Madness of School

Illustration of a figure in a tornado of books and formulas.

Artist: Helen Tran
Year: 2010
Medium: Digital image
Artist Statement: Praying for success to come their way, students give up most of their social life for school. Sacrificing sleep, meals, parties, fun, family and friends, they focus all their attention on school. They are trapped inside a tornado of books and equations.

Fears for Spears

Mock magazine article about Britney Spears.

Artist: Lindsay Spindler
Year: 2010
Medium: Mock Magazine Article
Artist Statement: Building on Voronka’s “Making Bipolar Britney: proliferating psychiatric diagnoses through tabloid media” (2008), I have constructed a tabloid in an attempt to show the way “the tabs” teach us about mental illness and may even contribute to the lifting of the stigma associated with it.

Freak in a box

A clay figure in a plexiglass box.

Artist: Manveer Randhawa
Year: 2010
Medium: Clay figure in a plexiglass box
Artist Statement: This person is unhappy, not because of his/her mental health but because of being labelled a “freak”. The freak is in a box, not to be fed, not to be loved. We know it and so does the freak. We put the freak in the box and the freak won’t break out because the freak knows its place.

Untitled

A sculpture of a face attached to a ball of newspaper with a pill in its mouth .

A sculpture of a face attached to a ball of newspaper with a pill in its mouth .

Artist: Ann Ohama
Year: 2010
Medium: Clay and paper maché 3D sculpture
Artist Statement: The face is rejecting popular treatments for depression. It’s pale because treatment has erased light and individuality. It’s a symbol of top-down treatment and the lack of control felt by the person being treated. The faint colours represent Hippocrates’ four humours, the foundation of modern medicine.

Normalcy Syndicated

An illustration of multiple characters in a 9 by 9 square display

Artist: Michaelia Young
Year: 2010
Medium: Pencil on poster board
Artist Statement: The purpose of this piece is to draw attention to how previously normal behaviours are now being labelled as disorders by the DSM. It is speculated that apathy, binge eating, internet addiction, compulsive buying and shyness, are all possible contenders for the DSM-V.

Stigma

A digital image of a figure wrapped in a white fabric with hand pointing at it in the background

Artist: Clare Critchley
Year: 2010
Medium: Digital Image
Artist Statement: This photograph symbolizes and aims to embody the vast social stigmas that are apparent in all cultures and societies. These can be stigmas against people with mental or physical disabilities, people of different sexual orientations (which is sometimes seen as a mental disorder), people of different ethnicities and beliefs, and anything else one can imagine.

Untitled

Photograph of a girl wearing a black dress.

Photograph of two girls.

Illustration of girl wearing a black dress.

Artist: Devlyn Van Loon
Year: 2010
Medium: Textile (dress) and conceptual drawing
Artist Statement: Fabrics and textures mimic the layers in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. A fitted bodice reflects the corseted style of the period, raw hems the deterioration of the narrator, extended panels the ripping of the wallpaper. The dress exists in the present as do many of the issues in the story. Model: Marley Reville (photographed with Devlyn Van Loon).

The Portrait of a Female Schizophrenic: maybe the world needs a little art therapy?

Female manikin with multiple media attached to it.

Female manikin with multiple media attached to it.

Female manikin with multiple media attached to it.

Female manikin with multiple media attached to it.

Artist: Nadia Ismail
Year: 2010
Medium: Mixed media surrealist sculpture
Artist Statement: Art therapy has now become a more positive and effective treatment of mental illness, commonly using surrealist expression to communicate. For this (surrealist) portrait, the artist became the “patient” and the “doctor” is the world. The hope is that societies at large will become more aware and have a better understanding of Schizophrenia and the history of treatment. It is therefore art therapy for the world…

Society Judges

Artist: Camille Stopps and Tanya Czerlau
Year: 2010
Medium: Dance
Artist Statement: Interpretations of madness vary. What is madness? Who is mad, or crazy, or insane? Who decides this? Society. Society judges: we label the ‘mad’, and as an outcome we define the boundaries of what is the ‘norm’ and what is ‘crazy’. For this project, we deliberately chose a high traffic location so that we could observe reactions. During our filming process we discovered that people did not notice what was going on, or perhaps did not care. This lead us to the title Society Judges. We feel that as a society, we are so fast to judge, and so slow to react and help any issue. This is especially prominent in the labelling of the ‘mad’

Signs of Sanity: Alley Art in a Crazy City

Graffiti on a wall.

Street Art

Street Art

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Street Art

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Street Art

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Graffiti on walls

A quote on a sign

An illustration of a sunflower on a wall.

The word "hope" spray painted on a wall between two pots of dying sunflowers.

Graffiti

A spray painting of a bird with the word "hope" stencilled out of it.

Artist: Elizabeth Farge and Seth Goering
Year: pre-2010
Medium: Photographs
Artist Statement: Is mental illness a disease of the brain or a by-product of an unhealthy society? Do people go mad organically or are they driven that way by the pressures of conforming to a set of values to which they do not or cannot subscribe? This modern culture of capitalism, technology, and consumption is a fertile breeding ground for anxiety and frustration. Politics are guided by the interests of corporations and the gap that divides the haves from the have-nots has widened into a deep chasm. For some, the alienation is too powerful a force. They become lost and take to looking for themselves in self-destructive places while others may turn inwards and retreat from a world that is not theirs. But for some, it’s not enough to disappear. They want their voices to be heard and will share their messages of discontent with anyone or anything that will listen. Graffiti art belongs to the proletariat. This back-alley art form has its roots in social and political dissent and has been used as a forum to force the message of those without a voice as far back as there were people who needed to be heard. Karl Marx might argue that the people are redistributing the wealth and using private property as a free public gallery. Take a walk through the alleys of Toronto and hear the many voices of those who let their messages of subversion, sorrow, sedation, and hope. For maybe those who refuse to quietly comply with this mad world are themselves the voices of sanity.

The Four Humors

A photograph of four girls wearing different colours.

Artist: Mary-AnneBulatao
Year: pre-2010
Medium: Photograph
Artist Statement: The photograph is from artist’s blog: www.stopthemadness500.tumblr.com. Dating from the fourth century BC, Greek medicine had developed a comprehensive holistic explanatory scheme for health and sickness in which madness was included: 1) RED BLOOD is the source of vitality and makes the flesh hot and went. Air is its element being warm, moist, and animated. It is ‘sanguine’ having a lively temperament, energetic, and robust. 2) CHOLER/YELLOW BILE is the gastric juice, indispensable for digestion and makes flesh hot and dry. Fire is its element being warm and dry. The individual is acrimonious, marked by an acid tongue. 3) PALE PHLEGM is a broad category comprehending all colourless secretions – a lubricant and coolant. It makes flesh cold and wet having water as its element. The individual is known to giving off black looks. 4) BLACK BILE is almost never found pure and is responsible for darkening other fluids, as when blood, skin, or stools turn blackish. It gives flesh cold and dry sensations. A surplus of black bile resulted in a lowness or depression.