The Program in Visual Arts presents two exhibitions of new work by Princeton seniors Maclean Collins and Caroline de Brito Gottlieb:
Canaries in a Coal Mine
MacLean Collins’ thesis show, Canaries in a Coal Mine, developed out of her interest in and experience with mental health. Under that broad topic, she explores the inside world of a psychiatric unit at Carrier Clinic, a “mental” hospital specializing in addiction and psychiatric treatment in Belle Mead, New Jersey. Using watercolors and sharpie on paper as well as found or owned objects, she deals with themes from diagnoses of depression and bipolar disorder to the do’s and don’ts of staying in a mental hospital.
if Language resists Pain why do they ask, where does it hurt
For individuals with chronic pain, there is a heightened awareness of the disconnect between how their body looks and how it feels to be inside of it. The sculptures in if Language resists Pain why do they ask, where does it hurt are formed through a conversation between the artist’s own sensorial experience in her body and the will and self-expression of the materials. In this way chronic pain is used as a medium to discuss the felt body, not the visually recognizable body. Upending the traditional reliance on visual and linguistic communication, this installation brings in additional senses such as scent, touch, and sound. The work does not aim to depict, explain, or express the pain itself, but plays with the futility of attempting to articulate this experience within a society that demands pain be visually apparent and linguistically understandable. This “inability” to sufficiently communicate reinforces the system in which the reality of these individual’s experience is often denied.
