RESILENCE / MENTAL HEALTH

Abstract

I used the concept of resilience and mental health as my interpretation of ”Uncanny stories” resulting in three large digital prints and a triptych forming a monumental action drawing. The context of ‘Resilience’ can be structured in various ways. However, while executing this installation and body of work, I framed resilience as the ability to be stable after traumatic life experiences and being able to deal with deeper life cracks, destructions, and inner bruises. It is in this context that I realised that the concept of resilience is not only linked to disaster, but also associated with how a person or society responds positively to adverse situations and circumstances, rather than giving up and remaining in a state of despair. Adversity, tragedy, or frustrations are common problems faced by many people in the world. In order to overcome these problems, the affected people will have to rely on their inner resilience to recover and bounce back to positive life inspirations. It is possible to be comforted by community or psychologists, but the ultimate survival and recovery rests on an individual to shift modes and let resilience preside. Therefore, fundamental objective of this body of work is to highlight that resilience can be both a process and an outcome. This is directly linked to the site of a burnt and demolished building, which I documented and the action-drawing process, enacted with line. I worked over time, dripping strings in oxides and dropping them, dragging them, bending my body, twisting myself, searching for connections.Through this work I am emphasizing that, while vulnerability can have negative consequences, a resilient attitude, and the ability to adapt to unusual events can lead to unexpected positive outcomes, gaining momentum to live beyond the ties and blemishes of trauma. The body of work titled “Internal wound” attests to the stains left by action as I moved from one side of the room to the other, resulting in unexpected outcomes

The three works, ‘Mental health’ is contextualized as elements of emotional, psychological, and social well-being of persons in the world. I documented onsite pigments on the walls of a building burned and destroyed by the mob that was perceived to be disgruntled due to being involved in a traumatic contention and psychosocial squabble. The resultant of the stains on the destroyed construction is the ones photographed and printed on three large scale archival papers. These images were taken from the Tswaing Crater museum building that was a site of contention and were blazed as a result, leaving behind visible burn patterns that made identifiable marbling shapes. These shapes were caused by melting, oxidation, carbonisation, wall paint colour changing, alloying, splashing, expansion and deformation, galvanising, soot and smoke deposition, and pure burn. As well as damage to an electrical system can constitute a fire pattern. These images resemble marbling patterns created by the meteorite's impact upon hitting the earth's surface. I therefore associated these pattens with reminiscent of those pattens caused by depression - a mental condition that people suffer from, without acknowledging it. As a global problem mental health is concerned with the way people think, feel, and act. It also influences how people deal with stress, interact with others, and make decisions. It affects one's thinking, mood, and behaviour as a unacknowledged problem, making traumatic stress levels volatile for affected individuals. The artwork captures cracks and stains, in which I read the patterns that are identifiable with corroded social relationships caused by decades of society's segregation, indifference to, and intolerance for people with mental illness. Such patterns are commonly reflective of psychosocial situations that affect global citizens irrespective of creed, religion, and gender. Resulting in environmental conflicts and squabbles that can be avoided if mental health is treated with the necessary awareness it deserves. The objective of this body of work and its argument is that societies should be understanding and supportive of those with mental illness. Whilst artists such as Eloghosa Osunde and Nobukho Nqaba work with similar themes, I consider my reflection through the specific images and materials such as oxides to contribute uniquely to the visual research in this field of visual thinking.