This is the type of exhibit that I leave and tell everyone about for the next few days. It was spectacularly immersive, interesting all throughout, contextualized and curated authentically, and peculiarly relatable.
The walls and furniture were all painted in warm happy hues that created the effect of being inside a child's mind.
There were big inflated cells hanging from the ceiling with colored lights casting even bigger shadows across every wall. The omnipresence of these immune cells cleverly highlighted how Jason's health was always on his mind and in his world.
Artworks were scattered across the floor and on the walls. The positioning of everything made the space feel like a room after a kid has been playing there, with their toys left mid-play.
TV, media and games were woven into Jason's memories through the exhibit. His artworks showed how current events he saw on the hospital TV blended into his lived experiences, attributing significance and symbolism to his memories. This was very relatable, perhaps it's something all children do, or maybe its something Jason and I share. I remember finding coincidences and alignments between the outside world and my inner world all the time and thinking they must be related.
My older brother once called my favorite stuffed toy ugly, and then a hurricane was announced to be hitting Miami, where we lived, in a week. Must be related right?
My older cousins told me about the guerillas in Colombia and then that night the dogs went crazy barking outside our grandparent's "finca". Must've been the universe sending us a warning right?
As a child, I thought the universe was always coordinated with my inner world, and everything was either a reaction, a sign of sorts, or had some other hidden meaning.
Quite like the story of 254:
The funny thing about "lived experience" is that we "live" our "experiences" in our head and through the filter of our inner monologue. We have an innate tendency to attribute meaning to everything, and without noticing, we turn events and images into personal symbols. For Jason, it was the Olympics, the World Snooker Championship, Doctor Who, John Lennon and the like. Evidencing the importance of these events and characters in Jason's experience opens up the possibilities for better works about "lived experience". Works that include our salient inner worlds overlayed onto the outer world we share. Clearly, factual events and diagnosis do not tell the whole story. And this exhibit demonstrates that beautifully.
On a lighter note, I loved the vibrance of the artworks. They were cartoonish, colorful, creepy crawly and brutally honest without being too dark.
While being immobilized from the neck down from the age of 11 to 16, Jason's creativity took off while he processed what was happening to him. Every surface was covered in patterns and colors, everything was bigger than expected and more expressive too. It showed the intensity of each experience Jason had - be it pain, fear, or creativity.
If other people had chance to express their inner lives during transformative and traumatic periods to the degree Jason has been able to express himself, we would learn so much about mental health, resilience, the power of creativity, and different mechanisms of healing from trauma.
I had similar thoughts during my SURGE residency. When given the chance to speak freely and vulnerably, accompanied by art materials and the option to paint rather than verbalize, I saw prosthetics-users open up about their amputation journeys like never before. Similarly, they didn't focus their stories on the medical facts, rather, they focused on their mental health journey and their support systems. They expressed physical pain but focused on the psychological effects, using humor and gestural art. They then expressed feeling lighter after speaking about the complex emotions that overlayed their traumatic/medical experiences. Wholesome expression was so important to them, yet somehow, so easily overlooked. (By "wholesome" I mean in its entirety, accepting their personal symbolisms, meanings and creative narratives.)
These two illustrations struck me as some of the best expressions of fear, containment and pain I have ever seen. "I'm a head on a pillow" sounds like something my dad would say when he was in the ICU. The tubes and drugs and beeping of machines makes you dissociate from your body, and your inability to move makes it that much worse. The feeling of being dissociated and immobilized is then paired with fear of more medical equipment being added, hence the constricting "iron lung" illustrated around Jason in the picture on the left. Crushing anxiety and crushing medical equipment are perfectly illustrated here.
The picture on the right shows how Jason felt his feet throbbing in pain when he was immobilized. They look electrified with pain. Bigger than the rest of his body, white-hot nerves and toenails a loud pink. The cleverness of it is that it isn't gory, anyone who knows this kind of pain will recognize it, but it won't be a scary image for children.
Speaking of children, they seemed to love this exhibit. Most people there were either a parent or grandparent who was there with their children. The exhibit was built for families - even though the themes were scary (hospitalization, pain, disability), they were delivered in a friendly, open and inclusive way. Curation and install teams really accomplish something when an exhibit is visually engaging and deeply interesting to a whole range of ages.
I can't wait to re-visit this exhibit later this week and see what else I learn from it.
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