Disordered: Conversations about mental health and society 

Alum Rachel Brown’s thesis project, Disordered: Conversations about mental health and society completed in Fall 2017 was a collaborative and public participatory art project which aimed at destigmatizing mental health issues and reframing them as societal issues. Rachel produced pop-up events at public parks where passersby could contribute to the research, expressing what they had learned from experiences with depression and anxiety and they were able to share their ideas for promoting mental health justice in our society. Rachel then focused on certain words and phrases that were developed during these pop-ups to create metal signs, stickers and a mural that she and collaborators installed around New York City.

IMA: What was your initial idea, inspiration, impulse for this project?
RB: Mental health is an issue I’ve long been concerned with, due to family history and personal experience, but I had not yet made a project on this important topic. I started working on it right after Trump took office, which seemed to re-traumatize and unbalance a lot of people, and especially the most vulnerable in our society. So it seemed like an opportune time to connect mental health and sociopolitical issues. Another inspiration for this project were social practice pieces that engaged people in conversation in public spaces. In the beginning, I thought I would utilize social media to draw people into the conversation, but that part quickly changed after I began to gather my collaborators and we discussed the harm social media can have on mental health. I also wanted some kind of street art to reflect the ideas shared in discussion, but I wasn’t sure of the form. But overall, the idea for Disordered was to create a project that would destigmatize mental health issues by connecting them to our history, culture, political, and economic systems in order to inspire personal, social and political transformations.

IMA: What’s something you learned from the process?
RB: I learned that making myself vulnerable and taking risks were necessary for the success of the project. I had to open up about my own mental health challenges, while relying on other people to help me in many ways. I had to take artistic and legal risks. Most importantly, throughout the project, people taught me that we need each other, and we need to talk about mental health in the context of social justice.

IMA: What advice would you give to someone starting thesis?
RB: Treat thesis like any other project. It’s not your first and it won’t be your last. Just go with your gut – what do you need to express as an artist that connects to the world right now? Begin.

IMA: Was there anything you tried for the first time on this project?
RB: Yes, definitely. I’d never created a social practice piece, stickers or street art. All the mediums were new, from the pop-up participatory installations in parks, to spray painting with stencils, to graphic design, to painting a mural. It was scary, but it was also exciting.

IMA: What was your research process? What did you learn from your research?
RB: My research process got a bit out of hand. Since I had studied political science in undergrad, and because mental health was my focus, I spent a lot of time reading about the history of the study and treatment of mental health, how different cultures and countries have dealt with it, how social and political systems affect people’s mental health, and more. My thesis paper was skewed towards this until my primary advisor, Marty, reminded me that this is an MFA program, not an MS or Phd program. I was very thankful for that. However, it was really important for me to have that base of knowledge when I led or participated in conversations with my collaborators and the public. On the art side of my research, I was mostly focused on social practice, since I knew so little about it. But I also read about street, intervention, activist, and public art. One could spend a lifetime studying all this, but I had less than a year. My research confirmed for me that mental health issues are social and political issues, even though people experience them as individuals. Mental health is connected to history and the present circumstances people live in, and that includes a lot of trauma and pain. So, we have to be compassionate and vulnerable with each other. We have to talk about the hard stuff, like racism, patriarchy and all kinds of oppression because it affects people’s ability to live healthy lives.

IMA: Did you work with collaborators? What did they bring to the project? How did they influence your approach?
RB: My collaborators, the Disordered Project Team as I called them, brought so much to the project! Through the different phases of the project, twenty people collaborated with me, on conceptualizing and designing the public pop-ups, the prompts, the signs, stickers and the mural. They brought their own experiences with mental health issues in relation to their own social, cultural and political realities. Some contributed artistically, some were more conceptual, some conversed with the public at the pop-ups, others helped with the installation of the metal signs, and some helped paint the mural. Since the project lasted for a while and had all these different phases, it allowed people to plug in when they were available and where they were most comfortable. Overall, my collaborators inspired me and gave me the courage to keep pushing the project forward. I cannot thank the Disordered Project Team enough. I could not have done this without them.

About Rachel Brown