A View from the Inside: Portraying the Experience of Mental Illness

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As a visual artist working in an academic context, I propose to create a series of large-scale photographic portraits of people with short-term psychotic disorders or episodic conditions like schizophrenia. These images will challenge the viewer to readdress his or her ideas about 'the type of people' represented. Subjects will be depicted normally, but the settings in which they are located will be altered digitally to coincide with the perceptual experiences described by each person. This interdisciplinary project will draw on the conventions of portraiture, on scientific understandings of the inner worlds of those who experience psychotic states and on the lived experiences of affected individuals. I will use digital manipulation to create images that subvert established pictorial conventions and, in doing so, question conventional ways of thinking about and relating to people with mental illness.The term psychosis literally means 'abnormal condition of the mind'. It is used to indicate a mental state often described as involving a 'loss of contact with reality'. Schizophrenia is a general term for a group of psychotic disorders characterized by long term disturbances in perception, affect, behaviour, and communication. A person's lived experience of psychosis could be seen to contradict accepted notions of what constitutes 'reality'. In fact, the involuntary loss of a 'normal' sense of reality is an aspect of human experience that remains stigmatized because we cannot account for it. The proposed photographs will form an essential contribution to my ongoing project of making work that challenges established conceptions of the relationships between identity, subjectivity and what is 'normal'. It will build on previous photographic projects such as After Image (1997), 'I' (1999) and Skin (2000), made in collaboration with people with physical disabilities or severe skin conditions.The imagery I create as a result of this new research will be inspired by the symbolism and style of historical portrait paintings. The purpose of the type of painting that I will refer to is usually to aggrandize and dignify the individual by showing him or her in an ornate interior, or outdoors as a wealthy landowner. In these paintings the subject of the portrait is characterized visually, using a number of symbolic and narrative elements. The subjects of my work will be people whose ability to function within society has been affected by the experience of mental illness. I am interested in the challenge of creating a series of believable, realistic images that reveal something of the chaotic and sometimes incomprehensible inner worlds of the people portrayed. Based on the physiognomic belief that a person's appearance mirrors his or her subjectivity or 'inner' identity, a traditional concern of portraiture has been to create an external 'likeness' of someone. In depicting both the external appearance and the internal experiences of the subjects, I aim to create rich and compelling images that will bring mental health issues into the public domain. These images will also provide a means of publicly representing the experiences of people whose sense of reality does not always coincide with that of 'normal' people.