Interpretive Centre – The Aesthetics of Mental Health
Tags: Vol. 1, Issue 4, June 2021
Humber’s Interpretive Centre featured a new and exciting exhibit this Spring, called The Aesthetics of Mental Health. This exhibition was inspired by the grounds of the former Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital, and the picturesque environment surrounding it. The combined natural and constructed environmental elements that were originally designed to influence a patient’s mental health, still resonate among the grounds’ users today.
The artists selected for the exhibit have taken inspiration from the history of mental health care, as well as evolving approaches to care today. Focusing on the individual experience within the larger institutional space, each artist has taken recognizable imagery and transformed it, transcribing new meaning to the objects. A common thread within all the works featured in the exhibit, is tangibility. With the topic of mental health, representations of the diversity of the individual experience can become abstract when represented through artwork. The artists have incorporated tactile materials, including veils, bricks, pills, and a ball of yarn to bring physicality to intangible feelings and experiences.
Video of #TidbitTours & the Artists of "The Aesthetics of Mental Health"