Juror's Statement
In My Head, In My Body looks at the many facets of living with mental health issues while finding our way through this challenging world. It is a show about suffering, transformation and about hope. Each of the artists reveals a relationship to internal struggles, utilizing a variety of medium including video installation, printmaking and three-dimensional form. There is tenderness, depth and courage in the work that evokes a sigh, a laugh out loud and near tears.
During COVID-19 most, if not all of us are grappling with our own challenging emotional and mental states. During "normal" times, one in five adults face a serious mental health issue, which includes depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Three to five percent struggle with bi-polar and schizophrenia. What goes on in our heads profoundly affects our relationships to our own bodies, to those we love and to the larger community. The works of these gifted artists give us a rare opportunity to consider our shared challenges together with beauty, grace and profound insight.
This is a very personal exhibition for me, as several close family members live with chronic mental health issues. I want to thank Target Gallery for hosting this exhibition at this time when we need it, and for the honor of curating the show.
-- Shanti Norris
Shanti Norris is chief curator for the Integrated Arts and Healing program at the Inova Schar Cancer Institute in Fairfax, Va.
Rebecca Hofmann (Annapolis, MD), Hide + Seek, 2020. Graphite, charcoal, chalk. $295.
“This piece embodies the physical nature of our default psychological suffering, something all humans go through and connect on. Questioning ourselves, our worth, our life. In times of trauma, so often we revert back to fragile infancy. It is our inner struggle that can beautifully connect us with our true selves and others.”
-- Rebecca Hofmann
Clara Bolle (Rotterdam, Holland), The Intruder 2, 2020. Acrylic paint on canvas. $525.62
“The Heart and The Intruder series consists of small and intimate paintings. All the paintings are based on the essay The Intruder by the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy. The Intruder deals with Nancy's heart transplantation and touches upon important theme's such as identity, community and technology. The heart is a paradox: without it we couldn't live but at the same time it's a time bomb that could cut us off in a second. Do we really know our own heart?”
-- Clara Bolle
Tanner Mothershead (Smithville, MO), As Above So Below, 2019. Intaglio print. $1,600.
“This print is a reflection on the necessity for unity both within oneself and one's surroundings. It literally depicts the human body as temple with pathways and recessing interiors for exploration.”
-- Tanner Mothershead
Alice Quatrochi (Springfield, VA), Inward Outreach, 2020. Acrylic paint. $1,400.
“Although our mind and body are inextricably intertwined, we are not directly aware of our thoughts or the processes by which we arrive at them. Therefore, an inherent disconnect is established between our mind and body.
"Can we ever know ourselves?
"Many have postulated that consciousness isn’t a single brain state but a conversation, a contest or a dance between brains that creates a mental state that can involve two or generate from a population.
"Can we ever know each other?”
-- Alice Quatrochi
Alexandra N. Sherman (Bethesda, MD)
Me and My Fear, 2019. Semi-precious stone watercolor on yupo. $500.
“Me and My Fear represents the physical manifestation of anxiety and fear. The piece explores the idea of being weighed down by carrying around these heavy emotions.”
My Spirit Carrying My Body, 2019. Semi-precious stone watercolor on yupo. $500.
“My Spirit Carrying My Body depicts the strength of will to persevere that is capable of seeing one through a particularly bad bout of depression or flare despite the fact that one's body might feel unable to carry on.”
-- Alexandra N. Sherman
Kathleen Greco (Southampton, PA), Pull, 2019. Photography. $1,800
“Pull investigates how the mind is pulled into or pulled away from unconscious or conscious thought.”
-- Kathleen Greco
Crystal Sim (Singapore), I'll always be here for you, 2020. Artist book and video. $146.91.
“I’ll always be here for you is a body of work that stemmed from my struggle with self-harm. Making this work gave me an outlet to express myself in a way I did not have a language for. The work is made into an artist book to convey the emotions and feelings of a person in distress through images and textiles. It highlights the vicious cycle of self-harm (a cycle that is hard to break out of) as well as the psychological aspects of it that cause people to voluntarily hurt themselves. I’ll always be here for you allow viewers to put themselves in the mental state of those that go through self-harm.”
-- Crystal Sim
Mary Murphy (Philadelphia), Hybrid #2, 2015. Oil pastel, colored pencil. $8,500.
“My work marries painterly illusionism with the latent psychological aspects of digital manipulation to explore the sexual unconscious. I am a child incest survivor, and these images fuse the face of my abuser with my emotions into new, quasi-figurative hybrid forms. Embedded in them are references to body parts, some comic, others hideous. Playful yet disturbing, these images straddle comedy and tragedy. Distortion is a metaphor in this work for physical/psychological transformation and evokes the illogical juxtapositions of dreams. The mutation of teeth and eyes into abstract sexual forms creates disembodied, uncanny and absurd figures that resemble anatomical cross-sections. The translation of facial topography into sexual anatomy mirrors the movement from exterior to interior, from male to female, from object to subject.
"I think of these works as visual descriptions of a hijacked developmental biology, images of a recursive absurdity – a fetus giving birth to itself – achieving autonomy through material and imagination.”
-- Mary Murphy
Stephanie Dyke (Reisterstown, MD)
If Only It Was That Easy, 2020. Wearable quilted fabric sculpture. $1,225.
The Void, 2020. Wearable quilted fabric sculpture. $1,225.
El Perdedor, 2020. Wearable quilted fabric sculpture. $1,225.
“[These wearable sculptures are] part of my on-going series on the lived experience of mental illness. Each piece offers symbolic and literal elements aimed at explaining--or helping viewers identify with--the emotions, sensations, and self-talk of mental illness. The metaphorical elements include the obvious: masks, anonymity, "differentness," but also the deeply personal element: the mask is made from one of my own pieces of work. I leave the words up to the viewer to decipher.”
-- Stephanie Dyke
Rania Razek (McLean, VA), Letting Go, 2019. Lustre Print on Bamboo. $1,100.
“The pink scarf thrown in the landscape background is the true meaning of 'Letting Go.' It was at a time, I, the photographer dealing with the mental state of losing friends to the disease. The place photographed was called Qiddiyah, considered Edge of the World, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It was the end of the year, and the pink scarf represented people who had breast cancer, to let go and live life to the fullest as much as possible. It also represented to letting go of those who lost the battle and accepted life. It still hurts.”
-- Rania Razek
Jeffery Byrd (Cedar Falls, IA), Proving Ground, 2016. Video/Performance. NFS.
“This surreal little action was created shortly before I suffered a stroke. In retrospect, it seems oddly prophetic.”
-- Jeffery Byrd
Jeremy Diamond (Athens, GA), Graellsia, 2019. Photography, nylon, silver, paint. $500.
“Graellsia is a meditation on the tendency of pressure to succeed and self-care to be at odds with one another. The work forcibly holds its wearer's mouth shut, preventing speech and eating. In doing so, the piece mimics Graellsia isabellae (the Spanish moon moth) and other Saturniid moths, which lack mouths and digestive tracts to more effectively pursue reproduction, at the cost of eventual starvation. The work is informed by the artist's own personal experience after becoming severely underweight after stopping sleeping and eating in pursuit of productivity and academic success.”
-- Jeremy Diamond
Brandin Barón (San Francisco, CA), I Had a Cough I Couldn’t Shake, 2020. Collage monotype, relief print and screen print on paper with cut paper, ink, gouache, watercolor, salt, mica powder and enamel, print 6/6. $800.
“This work was created in response to collective traumas surrounding the Covid-19 epidemic.”
-- Brandin Barón
Timothy DeVenney (Washington, DC), Art-o-fact #4 "Finite connotation," 2020. Mixed media. $175.
“Soren Kierkegaard penned the phrase 'Once You Label Me, You Negate Me…'
"Kierkegaard’s phrase is a conclusive statement that anyone who labels a person then proceeds to disregard the actual person behind the label. A criminal circumstance label can result in under-employment or unemployment with negative impacts to housing, transportation, education, healthcare, and all future stability. Life becomes more impossibility than opportunity.
"The cumulative effect of living the labeling is a constant drain on one's psychological well-being. Every aspect of one's life becomes constant worry and concern, the focus of every living moment. How do I?... Where do I?... What’s next?... Very few answers to far too many questions drain any sense of stability or consistency. A personalized sense of worthlessness and hopelessness abound to the point of internalized identity – all too easy to succumb to the pressures of an applied, inescapable labeling.
"When one confines the totality of another’s being into a single identifier, it depletes the very nature of the human behind the label. 'Finite connotation,' is a visualization of single verbiage identifiers commonly used toward those with a criminal record.”
-- Timothy DeVenney
Karen Olson (Hope, ME), Fire No Flame, 2019. Digital Photography. $600.
“I wanted a way to depict that ambiguous void, the space that lacks clarity or form. As I worked through my creative process with limited abilities, I discovered a minimal color palette and layers of reflected light would illustrate the language of the subconscious. I developed a specific method of intertwining elements digitally to portray the depth of the emotional experience. This image describes the internal physical state that arose from emotional pain. My legs were on fire, I experienced internal nerve tremors, I was immobilized by the experience and felt trapped.”
-- Karen Olson
Shannon Soldner (Columbia, MO), A Pale Illusion, 2015. Oil on canvas. $3,600.
“Deception plays a significant part in human behavior; furthermore, self-deception is the innately human ability to conceal the truth from oneself to in order to more successfully hide These deceptions become personal mythologies in order to cope with a sometimes less than perfect reality.”
-- Shannon Soldner
Sydney Paige Richardson (Round Rock, TX), Fragile, 2019. $400
“I wanted to create something soft, the feather, to represent the spine and rib cage. And I wanted something chaotic to represent my mind. When I am stuck in the deepest darkness, surrounded by chaos and my fragility, I am me.”
-- Sydney Paige Richardson
Virtual Content
Due to limitations arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, the three works of art are not on view in Target Gallery, but are still part of the exhibition.
Anna Cyan (Ontario, Canada), Return, 2020. Oil on canvas. $4,500.
“This painting is an answer to inner fragility, to a world of threats imposed externally and magnified by internal storms and memories of trauma. Painted amid shuttered doors and a hunger for personal protective equipment, this piece focuses on stepping out into the world without armour and without fear.”
-- Anna Cyan
Lauren Levato Coyne (Ferndale, MI), Flicker I, 2020. Apoxy, concrete, glass, acrylic, synthetic bear hair, fly fishing feathers, vintage pearls, ribbon. $1500.
“I deal with anxiety and body dysmorphia that results in feeling everything from out-of-body experiences to different parts of my body feeling deformed or enlarged, or sometimes missing. I'm able to channel this artistically through some mental gymnastics that allow me to pivot and imagine my body as a landscape. My body as a bird. My body as a home for insects. My body as a camouflaged creature. This calms me, it brings me joy, and re-grounds me back into my own body. By imagining I am another I am able to re-center into myself. By imagining I am part of the world around me I can stabilize my own body's borders.”
-- Lauren Levato Coyne
Target Gallery is the contemporary exhibition space of Torpedo Factory Art Center, managed by the City of Alexandria's Office of the Arts, a division of the Department of Recreation, Parks and Cultural Activities.