Madness

“Insanity – a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.”
– R. D. Laing

Insanity has historically been understood as a medical condition – a problem with the body or the brain that should be solved through extreme forms of therapy or medication. From hydrotherapy and insulin-induced comas to lobotomies and electroshock therapy, doctors treated madness as a disease that must be eradicated at all costs. If the disease could not be eradicated, then it should be contained inside the walls of an institution segregated from sane society.

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, people with mental illnesses were labeled as “mad.” A mad person was thought to be dangerous, defective, and unfit for public life. Just as they were excluded from society, they were excluded from the historical record. Because they were treated as medical subjects, information about their lives is difficult, if not impossible, to find today. When they died their stories were buried with them, leaving us with an incomplete picture of what life was like inside institution walls.

The stigma surrounding mental illness persists in our contemporary collective psyche. Hidden deep in the woods, behind prison walls, or completely unmarked; most mental institution cemeteries are inaccessible and forgotten. The documentation of these cemeteries is tangible, indelible evidence that these people lived and died while in the care of the state. The cemeteries exist, even if the burial records do not. The gravestones remain, even if the institution buildings have been demolished long ago. The people mattered, even if we will never know their names.

MADNESS reflects on the dehumanization of people with mental illnesses through a historical lens. The work challenges the viewer to consider the implications of segregation and stigmatization by presenting these mass gravesites as evidence of an overlooked history.