Reflecting experience through art: “Seclusion”
Content note: This blog post contains descriptions of seclusion, isolation, and gender-based violence. Imagery contains artistic nudity. We encourage you to take care of yourself and your needs as you read this content. If you require any support, we have a list of some available resources here.
“Seclusion” by the writer
Image description: A collage on an empty black background. In the middle is the subject, a figure of a nude woman, Venus, laying on her side facing away. Venus is cut out from a postcard of the painting “The Toilet of Venus ('The Rokeby Venus')” by Diego Velázquez. Cut out images of men’s eyes and hands from magazines surround Venus, eyes staring at her and hands reaching towards her, touching her. In the top left corner, there is an upside-down cut out of a winged cupid, Venus’s son, holding a mirror of the distorted reflection of Venus, also a cut-out from the painting “the Toilet of Venus”.
Note about the writer: I am a woman with lived experience with involuntary incarceration including seclusion. Art making has been a useful road in my healing and is a way I like to express myself.
“Seclusion” and “The Toilet of Venus ('The Rokeby Venus')”by Diego Velázquez
Portions of this collage incorporate elements of the painting “The Toilet of Venus ('The Rokeby Venus')” by Diego Velázquez. The painting is significant for its feminist historical context. On March 10, 1914, Mary Richardson, a suffragette, was protesting against the arrest and imprisonment of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst. The painting was slashed at least five times with a meat cleaver. The canvas itself was cut and damaged.
This collage is a personal reflection of my experiences of seclusion while involuntarily incarcerated on psychiatric wards in hospitals.
I chose a flat black background for contrast. Emotionally, it expresses fear and an absence of light. There is very little light in a seclusion room. I chose to keep the collage sparse because a seclusion room is sparse. It feels like a kind of void…somewhere in an unknown space, suspended in time, apart from the rest of the world.
I have flashbacks...I would be taken there, abruptly without explanation. Dragged, without my consent, it was terrifying. A 10 by 10 cell with a metal toilet, a metal sink, a bed without any bedding, no window, no clock, no daylight. Time does not exist. The only sense of time you have is when meal trays arrive, three times a day.
The subject in the collage (Venus from “The Toilet of Venus”) is a figure of a nude woman, representing a person in the seclusion room. There is this feeling of being exposed physically. Hospital clothing did not entirely cover my body. There were no blankets on the bare mattress to cover myself with.
I used images of men’s eyes and hands cut out from magazines and postcards to surround the subject, suggesting men who are watching or touching the subject. So often men worked as nurses and security guards and so often, medication was forced, involving physical restraint and forced injection. I am a survivor of both physical violence and sexual assault. Being restrained by several men and being forcibly injected, in the buttocks, was retraumatizing. Seclusion was the opposite of care, it felt like punishment.
The original painting depicts the mythical goddess Venus and her son, Cupid, holding a mirror of Venus’s distorted reflection. The painting is often misinterpreted in terms of the reflection in the mirror. Venus may appear to be gazing at her own reflection, but when the optics of the painting are analysed, it is revealed that she is looking at whoever is looking at her. “The Venus Effect “describes the human tendency to maintain beliefs inconsistent with perceivable reality. I included this in the collage because this is an aspect of seclusion, the absolute distortion of perceived reality from sensory deprivation and the experience itself. It is also the distortion of reality of how the staff, like nurses and security, perceives the person in seclusion.
“…The staff cannot “see” the subject. They do not know her as a person. She has been dehumanized. She is treated in a manner where she no longer a person. She has become an invisible object within the patriarchal medical system.”
– the writer
I placed Cupid, who was Venus’ son, in the upper corner to suggest dissociation. Separating Cupid from Venus in the collage represents the despair of disconnection from loved ones. I was conscious of being alone, completely isolated from any human contact or communication even though that was what I needed the most. I was also always aware of being watched by the camera in the room which was being monitored by an unknown staff member. People wouldn't acknowledge or speak to me. They brought food, I would beg for them to speak to me, but they would either ignore me, or they would mock me and sneer. It's demoralizing and de-humanizing to be ignored — sometimes I needed someone to acknowledge me, to speak to me. I needed to feel seen and heard.
When you're ill you need to feel cared for by other human beings. You need to feel connected.
You go to the hospital for care yet, care turns into torture if you are put into a locked room where you have nothing; no stimulation, no light, and no connection to loved ones. A caring system should prioritize connection and recognize the person as a whole human being deserving of respect, dignity and compassion.
Portions of this experience and others were shared with us in Façade of Safety: Gender-based violence in BC’s involuntary mental health system. Façade of Safety documented how BC’s involuntary treatment system, and Mental Health Act, do not meet BC’s human rights obligations because they fail to prevent and adequately respond to gender-based violence, as well as fail to provide trauma-informed and violence-informed services. To learn more about gender-based violence in involuntary treatment in BC and for recommendations to improve BC’s mental health system based on what we learned from lived experience expertise, check out Façade of Safety.
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