Paintings serve as loud hailer for people with schizophrenia
People visit a painting exhibition at the Shanghai Mental Health Center in Xuhui District. All the 49 paintings are created by three hospitalized artists with schizophrenia.
A unique exhibition of paintings opened at the Shanghai Mental Health Center on Thursday – all the 49 paintings are created by three hospitalized artists with schizophrenia.
With the theme of "loud hailer", the exhibition offers people with the mental disorder a chance to express themselves artistically and allows their voice to be heard by the public, officials from the center said. This can arouse awareness and engender better understanding and support for people with mental diseases, they added.
"Loud hailer means two-way communication. These paintings are created by patients who have been hospitalized for a long time. They live in a relatively closed environment. So we want to use this exhibition to achieve communication between these hospitalized artists and the audience," said Chen Mengyuan, the curator.
"We have left a large wall space for audience to write down their comments through words or pictures and we will send these to the artists after the exhibition ends."
Since the three artists can't be at the exhibition due to their health, three figures created in line with each's own body and characters are at the scene with strings of loud hailer connected to them. "The inside of each figure is full of flowers, as we want to tell the public that these people with mental disease are beautiful inside," she said.
A figure created in line with the real body of one artist with strings of loud hailer on both sides.
Dr Xie Bin from the Shanghai Mental Health Center said the exhibition also aims to remove the stigma attached to people with schizophrenia.
"The incidence of serious mental diseases like schizophrenia is 1 percent. We want to help them live a normal life and enjoy a good life quality through proper medical treatment and guidance," Xie said.
"We hope more people with mental disease will become scholars, artists and even great scientists like John Nash through medical treatment and a good social environment."
Nash was an American mathematician who was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize for Economics and whose life as a schizophrenia patient was depicted in the movie A Beautiful Mind, based on his book of the same name.
Visitors to the exhibition expressed their surprise at the bright colors used by the artists in their paintings.
"I thought people with mental disease usually have a negative mood and their paintings could be grey and black. But I saw many bright yellow and green here. It means they want to express their mind eagerly," said a female visitor. "Some paintings are very cool and interesting."
The exhibition – at Building 6 of Shanghai Mental Health Center on 600 Wanping Road S. in Xuhui District – will run through May 20. It is free, but health code and temperature checks are required.
All paintings are connected through strings of loud hailers.
A visitor takes photos of the paintings. People can post comments, in writing or drawing, on a wall at the exhibition.
A woman draws on the wall to express her feeling after seeing the exhibition.
