I wrote a bit about this piece for the Fibre Blog at ACAD. You can find it here. I just don't want to re-write things. However, I did want to record some of the thoughts that I've been having in terms of reflecting upon what imagery I've been choosing to embroider. Re-reading some history of old mental asylums, it takes a toll on me. It's horrific, a form of psychological massacre. Social rejection turned into social genocide. I place myself in the time and place where someone would be cast out because of something as small as migraines or anxiety; lobotomized for something like schizophrenia or manic depression. There is such darkness that we gloss over, pretending that it never happened. If we can't pretend, we hide. Swallowing lies. Making scars magically disappear, attempting to silence those who disagree.
The graffiti on the walls of asylums is thought-provoking, disturbing, repulsing. It's a dream of horror and macabre, not realizing how mad it makes the artist look. It becomes difficult to determine which graffiti was created by the lunatics, and which was created by those who claim to be sane. It blurs the line between sanity and insanity. It makes us question whether or not there is a divide to begin with. Perhaps we are always mad, and there is just a single push that makes us accept the fact that we never knew a reality.
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