Having had the privilege of visiting the Wellcome Collection on the 8th of January this year, I was certain that I would be guaranteed a stimulating, innovative and unexpected experience. The museum is said to make the familiar strange as I came to discover when I explored the museum’s newest exhibition about the Bedlam Asylum.
The exhibit began with an installation of artworks by Eva Kotátková. They ventured into the physiological impacts of both the institutional constraints and social pressures that weighed down on patients young and old. Through photographs that had been sewed together in strange collages to scribbled notes about morphed concepts of death, spectators were able to project themselves into minds of those patients and empathise with their thoughts.
The exhibition revealed some of the treatments that were adopted throughout the ages. In the 1940s, mental hospitals administered Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT/Electroshock) on patients without their consent or anaesthesia. It had been seen as an effective method of treatment for depression and psychosis by some doctors and patients but others saw it as a form of torture.
Nearer to the end of the exhibition there featured Shana Moulton’s film on ‘contemporary anxieties’ though her alter ego ‘Cynthia’. The strange production once again pulled spectators into the world of an individual who viewed reality in a different light. The colourful psychedelic setting combined with the various consumer goods that the main character interacted with throughout made for an interesting watch and once again provided us an insight into the way others perceive the world.
It had been after exploring the whole of that fascinating exhibition that I came to truly understand the meaning behind Thomas Tryon’s words “The world is but a great Bedlam, where those that are more mad lock up those who are less”-1689.
The Wellcome Collection truly provided an insight into the lives and minds of patients of the Bedlam Asylum whilst allowing us to empathise with and better understand them. After all, it is infamous for being a ‘destination for the incurably curious’.
By Nabihah Rahman, Woodford County High School
