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This Padlet is meant to be an accessible and open educational tool. I included all of my text on the screen in order to make the Padlet easy to navigate and use. Filled with interactive elements, I invite all viewers to engage with the presentation in any way which is meaningful and reflective.

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How can art be used as a medium of communicating the psychological experience of illness?

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How can art be used as a medium of communicating the psychological experience of illness?

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Artistic Statement

Illness, although biomedical in nature, is simultaneously experienced psychologically. Such an experience is dependent on the physicalities of the disease and its social context. Illness cannot be contained to scientific parameters given its subjection to social associations and stereotypes. This Padlet addresses the nuances of illness which exist beyond its medical reality.

Experiencing illness is challenging as it has the potential to create a disconnect of identity between a patient's former life as a healthy person and their current life of being ill. Given the complexity of such an experience, understanding the reality is difficult for the unaffected eye. The personal nature of the experience of illness can be challenging to communicate given its manifestation through dense emotions. The lack of awareness from the public on topics related to illness and diseases enables stigmatization and misinformation. Effectively communicating and processing the reality of illness allows for social acknowledgment on the complexity of illness.

Art can communicate the physical and psychological duality of illness. Simultaneously, it allows those who experience illness to creatively put their realities into a visible form without the constraint of words. The psychological experience of illness is not limited to a particular disease, geographical location, or time era. The art pieces within this Padlet act as translators for this phenomenon. Spanning modern and late artists from across the globe, the recurring themes of isolation, misunderstanding, and foreignness highlight the authentic experiences of illness. From Louis Wain in the late 1800's to Paulina Siniatkina in the modern day, the Padlet reinforces the intersections which exist between one's health, personal identity, and social environment.

Art encourages engagement with an audience. Simply looking at a piece of art will not reveal its depth or intention. Thus, a viewer is asked to consider, think, and take into perspective several facets of themselves and their environment to thoroughly digest the content of the art. By doing so, art can relay vast perspectives and experiences which are often misunderstood, such as illness. This Padlet encourages engagement between art and its audience to curate understanding about the complex experience of illness.

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According to its definition, illness is "a disease or period of sickness affecting the body or mind" (Oxford Dictionary). By such a standard definition, illness only encompasses the symptoms of its root causes. However, given the nature of illness, its symptoms impact a person's life and consequent psychological experience. Illness is not limited to affecting one's health as it interacts with one's identity, social environment, and relation to life.

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Artist: Louis Wain. Series of painting completed from the 1880’s to late 1930’s.

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Evolution of Mental Health Illnesses. The Impact of a Mental Health Illness on a Person's Sense of Self.

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Evolution of Mental Health Illnesses. The Impact of a Mental Health Illness on a Person's Sense of Self.

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Thank you for viewing my Padlet. Should you have any questions or thought, please feel free to leave them in the comments.

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Thank you for viewing my Padlet. Should you have any questions or thought, please feel free to leave them in the comments.

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Artist: Frida Kahlo. The Broken Column. 1944

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Artist: Myron Dyal. “Sculpture 66”. Untitled and undated.

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Liberation of Deteriorating Illness Based Stigma 

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Liberation of Deteriorating Illness Based Stigma 

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Just as art has the capacity to be used for personal, public, and social causes, illness is understood and experienced differently in personal, public, and social spaces. Using art as an agent to explore the complexity of illness speaks both to the role that art plays within humanity and the depth to which illness infringes into life.

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I create art to better understand myself.

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I create art to make a social statement.

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I observe art to become more aware of foreign concepts.

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Wain’s cat drawings grew in popularity in the 1880’s. Commissioned for children's books, magazines, and journals, his art was displayed for a wide social audience. Wain's marriage to Emily Richardson was the root of his success and as well as the trigger to his decline in health. Shortly after the marriage in 1883, Richardson was diagnosed with breast cancer. In an attempt to lift his wife’s spirit, Wain started to draw Richardson his signature cats, igniting his fame. After the death of his wife, Wain fell into a depression. Riddled with poverty due to World War One, his mental health further deteriorated. In 1924, he was committed to an asylum where he spent the last 15 years of his life. Although unofficially diagnosed due to the lack of diagnostic measures, it is believed that Wain suffered from schizophrenia (Philip). Throughout his time at the asylum, Wain continued to draw his famous subject: cats. The panel of eight cat drawings are positioned in chronological order from before his diagnosis to the midst of it. They serve as a timeline and reflection of his state and internal experience with the illness.

Obtained from the following: Schaffer, Ella “Art as a Medium of Communicating the Experience of a Mental Health Illness”. 2023, Trinity College.

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Wain’s cats, centered in all his drawings, are depicted as solitary and increasingly foreign, an analogy to his personal experience with schizophrenia. The realities of a mental health illness are often unknown by those unaffected, leaving those who experience it to be misunderstood by others. Similarly, despite Wain's intention of drawing a cat in each of his drawings, his later art can be seen as geometric patterns or abstract, unconventional, and extraneous depictions of some entity. The foreignness of the later cats symbolize the mirrored experience of foreignness within Wain’s changing identity that his illness imposes.

Having to “cope with the often devastating effects” of his schizophrenia, Wain suffers “from social exclusion and prejudices'' given to him by society's conception of the illness (Markowski). As his disease progresses, his cats become less “cat-like” symbolizing how society distances him from his original humanity. In the first panel, the cat looks “normal,”  however in the third and subsequent panels they become unrealistically multi-colored, and their backgrounds defy reality before becoming completely omitted. Communicating through his cat drawings, he reflects the way in which society sees him: non-human, crazy, foreign, and abnormal.

Unlike the association of schizophrenia with craziness, his art portrays creativity, difference, and a perspective only graspable through experience. Likewise, Wain challenges the audience to see him as a human and artist, rather than just a person with schizophrenia. The eyes of the cat lie in the center of each drawing, as if asking the audience to truly see the art and himself for what they are.

As an audience sees his cats evolve in abstraction, foreignness, and anti-idealism, they can relate whether in their own experiences of isolation, misunderstanding, fear, or uncertainty, even if not in the context of a mental health illness. In doing so, Wain’s art communicates more than a visual image, but a feeling, experience, and emotional state.

Wain’s art also empowers him to communicate the experience with himself. Using art as a means of therapy allows him to stay connected communicate with an aspect of himself that was ever present in him, regardless of the condition of his health.

Obtained from the following: Schaffer, Ella “Art as a Medium of Communicating the Experience of a Mental Health Illness”. 2023, Trinity College.

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Known for her evocative, metaphoric, and vulnerable self-portraits, Frida Kahlo was a Mexican artist in the early to mid 1900's. Intending to study medicine and not art, her plans changed after a life altering event. At age 18 Kahlo was in a bus accident that left her with a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, and 11 fractures in her right leg. The intensity of her injuries left her in chronic pain and she endured over 30 surgeries in her life. In particular, her back injury was so severe that between 1940 and 1954 she wore 28 separate supportive corsets made of metal, leather, and other materials (Philips). Her health left her both hospitalized and bed bound for months at a time during various periods of her life. Kahlo taught herself how to paint in the early stages of her life-long recovery and used it as a means of personal expression. Her art is known to be reflective of herself and the relationship between the physical and psychological after-affects of the bus accident.

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Kahlo’s exhibit passionate emotions through her painting "The Broken Column." Staring into the eyes of her audience, the painting portrays pain, vulnerability, discomfort, and isolation. The art acts as an attempt to convey the experience which Kahlo's physical injury prescribes her.

Kahlo chooses to paint herself with a metal spine which erupts her body in half. The division down the middle of her torso is reflective of the physical reality of her back after undergoing multiple surgeries. However, it is also a metaphor for a divided experience. Her spine divides most of her body into 2 parts just as her injury divides her life. Constricted from things that she could do before her accident - walking and living without chronic pain- Kahlo's medical condition changes her lifestyle and physical capacities. Her condition intrudes on her former life and strips her from a sense of self which was once familiar.

Nude from the waist up, Kahlo chooses to reveal her skin - a direct reflection of her flesh and consequent humanity. Despite being trapped within a metal corset and having a purely metal spine, Kahlo reminds her audience that she is nevertheless human. Although made dependent on medical technology, Kahlo is still a fully armed psychological creature that is reactive to pain, stigma, and the actions of others. The nails embedded in her skin remind the audience of her pain that is both physical and emotional. In her nudity, Kahlo also explicitly reveals her identity as a Mexican and woman. In blatantly sharing these aspects of her self she reminds the audience of her identity outside of her illness and that she is not a robotic metal patient, but a human.

What are the tears for? Are they symbolic to the pain she feels by the nails or by her back? Do they speak to the pain of her loneliness? Do they speak to her inability to revert to her life before her bus accident? Are they for the pain which she feels being unable to produce children due to the nature of her injuries? The painting is reflective of the complexity of the experience of illness in all of its realms.

Paintings are intimate forms of communication, and portraits specifically are portals into one's reflections about oneself. The empty background and moody sky suggest the psychological state of Kahlo. Depicting herself alone without the presence of even a single bird or tree points to a scene of isolation, sadness, and abandonment. Kahlo is alone in the experience of her complex medical condition. Subjected to constant medical tests and painful surgeries, Kahlo walks through life without the comfort of an individual with a shared experience.

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Artist: Frida Khalo. Self Portrait with the Portrait of Doctor Farill. 1951.

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Myron Dyal is a modern-day California based artist who makes paintings, drawings, and sculptors. At age 4, he started expecting seizures and was later diagnosed with frontal lobe epilepsy. Growing up, Dyal’s medical condition was not treated with compassion or dignity. He regularly endured extensive beatings from his father and religious exorcisms. The family's religious background made them think that he was demonically possessed: “in the Bible epilepsy is referred to as demonic possession” (Charon). Dyal started taking valium to treat his epilepsy as an adult. However, the medication made him feel unlike himself. His capacity for deep thought was limited. Dyal took to alcohol as a coping mechanism. His lifestyle led to his divorce with a wife he loved and to a suicide attempt. Eventually, Dyal found art. Using art as a method of coping and expressing his illness was lifesaving: “had I not discovered the process of art, I think that I would have been dead long ago" (Charon).

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Dyal's sculpture was inspired by a hallucination that he experienced during one of his epileptic seizures. The sculpture depicts a figure in the midst of skulls and the heads of others. The figure's strangeness and alienation from a typical human form reflects how illness “changes the way that you deal with the world” (Charon).

Growing up, Dyal was shamed and condemned for his illness. He was led to believe that epilepsy was a reflection of his morality and relationship with God, the illness brought him a personal conflict. The background of the scene is filled with dull looking heads and skulls: representative of the perception of epilepsy being related to immorality, craziness, and un-humanness. In spite of the background, the figure's arms are raised to the side and its head is supported by a straight neck. Exuding confidence, un-restriction, and freedom, the figure symbolizes rejection of stereotypes associated with epilepsy. Learning to accept and embrace his illness as an element of his identity, Dyal turned down the associated stigmas with his condition. Initially constrained to feel society's interpretation of his disease, Dyal changed the way he thought and consequently experienced epilepsy. Just as the sculpture's figure breaks free from its dulling background, Dyal broke free from the society's conceptual grip. Likewise, the sunglasses of the figure are representative of him blocking the social perception of epilepsy which stigmatizes the disease. Using art to change the way he feels about his disease, the psychological experience of Dyal's epilepsy becomes more reflective of his humanness and not illness.

The way in which Dyal experiences epilepsy comes from societal shame, but also the very nature of the illness. The skulls of the sculpture's background symbolize death and the associated psychological pain of having to deal with the possibility of a fatal condition. A dumming, depressing, and emotionally daunting fact, the burden lies on Dyal's consciousness. However, he chooses to embrace life and the illness just as the figure of the sculptor embraces its originality and creativity in contrast to its background.

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Dyal’s art reflects the experience of his seizures and how they interact with aspects of his identity. Allowing him to better understand his condition, Dyal's art attempts to familiarize himself with his seizers which were once foreign and strange experiences. Given the complexity of the psychological experience of epilepsy, creating art allows Dyal to reflect on his condition and the stance of his illness in relation to himself. Charon, a short story documentary, explore Dyal's relationship to art and his personal story as an artist.

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The unpredictable nature of epilepsy takes away Dyal’s control over his body. In this sculpture, he symbolically displays the lack of autonomy in moments of his seizures by depicting a cloak standing free from the figure of a body. Just as a body does not fill the cloak, Dyal's body - the means by which he makes decisions, acts, speaks, and exudes his free will - is frozen and beyond his control during a seizure. Inevitably, such an experience would leave any person feeling suspicious, nervous, and as though chained to the weight of their illness. As represented through the eerie nature of the clock, Dyal's illness is not always an experience of comfortability and familiarity. Adjusting and coming to terms with the disease took time, discomfort, and changed the way in which he understood his identity.

The hollowness of the sculptor speaks to the stigmas of epilepsy. It alludes to how Dyal is seen for the social assumptions of the disease and not his individuality and subjective experiences. Being misunderstood he is left feeling sad and gloomy, just like the mood of the sculpture. By this experience, the realities of epilepsy include more than symptoms of the physical disease. As reflected in the vacancy of the cloak, the lived psychological experience of illness is difficult to process, thus leaving people feeling empty and isolated.

Arguably, the sculpture stands as a symbol of death and the added vulnerability which epilepsy leaves Dyal with. Dealing daily with epilepsy, Dyal is reminded of his potentially fatal condition and the lack of autonomy he has over his life. Such a constant realization leaves a person worried, sad, and in the face of a dooming fact. Just as the cloak is heavy and dense, so is the reality which Dyal faces.

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As the TikTok video shows, Louis Wain's art is dependent on his emotions, feelings, and psychological condition as caused by his life events. The death of his wife and the onset of his mental health illness impacts his art by changing the way he chooses to reflect himself. His art acts as a mirror for his psychological condition- as his life becomes more challenging and emotionally tense, his art became more abstract and reflective of complexity and struggle.

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Paulina Siniatkina’s collection, Hold Your Breath, was inspired by her experience receiving treatment for tuberculosis in 2015. In total, Siniatkina spent 7 months in isolation in a TB clinic in Moscow, Russia. "Having faced the reality of isolation, alienation and stigmatization inside a hospital" Siniatkina's art communicates the experience (Siniatkina). During her time in treatment, she came to witness the stigma surrounding the disease. The first words she heard from her doctor after her diagnosis were: “don’t tell anyone about your diagnosis” (Siniatkina.) Reflecting on her experiences and the other patients with whom she was treated, she brings to light the label that TB associated her with and the consequent shame the illness imposed onto her psyche.

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Siniatkina purposely depicts herself in a moment of vulnerability and shame to translate the experience that patients with tuberculosis endure due to the social stigma of the disease.

Despite being in a crowd, Siniatkina is alone. The dislike, disgust, fear, and shock of those around her leave her standing solitary in the middle of the canvas. In a crowd of nearly 20 people, not a single person shows her comfort or care. A diagnosis of tuberculosis comes with more than a bacterial invasion of the lungs: it comes with social stigma and consequent exclusion. Associated with poverty, poor hygiene, immigration, and formerly witchcraft, those who suffer from the disease are simultaneously subject to its social assumptions. (TB Alert) Feeling the stigma as a patient, Siniatkina is left feeling ashamed, forgotten, and uncared for. Painting these feelings with grays and blues she creates a scene of gloominess that is polar to the crisp whiteness of the lily which she holds. The flower symbolizes purity, health, and rebirth, all of which are distant to the characterization of tuberculosis.

The mask stands as a visual reminder of her illness and her attempt to reduce its transmission. However, it also serves as a shield from society. The mask hides part of her face as if concealing her identity from the crowd's density. Siniatkina is embarrassed, shameful, and even fearful for being associated with the disease and so she stands in such a way that does not draw automatic attention. Although Siniatkina attempts to mix in with the background of the crowd, she remains central to the paining. Her straight-shooting eyes pierce the canvas and catch the attention of viewers. Looking directly at the painting's audience, she tries to connect with them on the basis of her humanity and not disease.

The diagnosis of tuberculosis labels Siniatkina. Because of the stigma of the disease, the crowd reacts to her label and not to her as a person. Even though the biomedical nature of tuberculosis does not create symptoms of shame, guilt, and isolation, the lived social experience of the disease enables such feelings. Wearing all black, Siniatkina mourns for her previous identity as someone without the disease and, by association, the former way she was treated by society.

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Artist: Paulina Siniatkina. Hold Your Breath. 2016.

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Perception of Others. Illness as a Label.

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Perception of Others. Illness as a Label.

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Using one word, how would you describe the cat in the first panel? Using one word, how would you describe the cat in the last panel? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

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Using one word, how would you describe the cat in the first panel? Using one word, how would you describe the cat in the last panel? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

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Kahlo's art is imaginative of the psychological pain and turmoil which she experienced despite being expressed through a portrayal of a human's physical medium. What emotions come to mind when you look at Kahlo’s painting? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

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Sitting in a wheelchair, Kahlo paints a portrait of her main surgeon, Dr. Farill. Unlike using typical mediums such as paint, Kahlo uses a heart, presumably her own, to craft the portrait of her provider.

Unlike before her bus accident at age 18, Kahlo's life lies in more hands than just her own. Kahlo's inclusion of her doctor in her portraits speaks to how her physical wellbeing is dependent on people like Dr. Farill. Painting her physician with her own heart, it points to the credit which Kahlo owes to Dr. Farill, but simultaneously the impact of such medical care on her own life and its draining psychological effects. The experience of illness is not one of an individual person - the story includes other people and a complex story line.

The heart, socially known to be representative of one's identity, love, passion, and core of life, speaks to how Kahlo's health changed her life and forced her to adapt, a psychological feat. In the painting, Kahlo wears both white and black, which reflects the range of emotions she experiences in relation to her doctor and subsequently her own health. White, a symbol for life, signifies how Dr. Farill is her facilitator of life. The black, a symbol for mourning, reflects the pain of Kahlo's injury and how it left her grieving for her former life. Through both lenses, she simultaneously experiences pain, acceptance, thankfulness, anger, and sadness. Despite the polarity of some the emotions, they speak to the complexity of her experience with illness.

Kahlo's clothing is also symbolic to her heritage. Wearing a traditional Mexican shirt, she incorporates myriad aspects of her identity into the painting. As her art reveals, she is more than a patient, but a Mexican, women, and artist.

To Kahlo, art was a means of survival, passion, and love - just as the heart is to life. Kahlo's paints from and through her heart - the art is a genuine reflection of her state of mind and emotions. Gloomy and removed from bright colors, the painting reflects the sadness of Kahlo's life due to her illness, but the ubiquitous gratitude which remains.

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It is estimated that in 2022, 10.6 millions people had TB. However, how many had the disease officially detected and diagnosed? Check your answer in the comments.

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Tuberculosis can be difficult to diagnose given that the disease can take years to become active. (TB Alert) Receiving and obtaining treatment for TB can also be difficult given the social stigma of being diagnosed with the disease. Fearful of being socially labeled and consequently perceived under strict stereotypes and associations, a diagnosis of TB simultaneously comes with a challenging psychological experience.

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Using her platform to dismantle social stigma surrounding TB, Siniatkina is unapologetic about the way which patients with the disease are treated. Combing her social media presence with her artistic ability, she uniquely communicates the way which she felt as a patient with TB and her consequent desire for social change.

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Do you recognize the depiction of a cat across all of the paintings?

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Can you relate to Dyal's art even if not in the context of your personal health?