Eighty-Six Reasons for Asylum Admission

Early asylums were brutal places for women. This collection explores how and why they were sent to asylums and the botched diagnoses and treatments they received. Straightjacketed women, some with gold masks and others with birds, stare blankly forward while other women are entrapped by their bed sheets. There are championship cup trophies to male medical misogyny, outstretched and bandaged hands, jumbo teeth wrapped in porcelain-coated gauze, razor-thin porcelain teacups, a doll with escape masks, female phrenology study kit, asylum wheelchair and resin reliquaries.  Tintype photographs of artist as asylum patient dressed in authentic 1800s clothing illustrate the artist's complete immersion into the series.