4 African Mental Health Artivists to Watch.
The connection between art and mental health is enduring. For centuries, artists have grappled with the trials of mental challenges through varied artistic mediums, capturing emotional expressions of blissfulness, to afflictions of anguish. Eloghosa Osunde, Tsoku Maela, Joana Choumali and Etinosa Yvonne Osayimwen are four visual artists on the African continent facilitating a dialogue about the complexities of mental health; often tethered to the human condition and experiences of political violence.
In her series titled Colour This Brain, Nigerian-born visual artist Eloghosa Osunde adds texture and striking hues of colour to neurodivergent brain states. The series serves as a mental health vision board, meant to define and creatively communicate the artist’s depression and anxiety in six stages referenced as, the (1) ‘the climb’, (2) ‘the summon’, (3) ‘the fractions’, (4) ‘the fading’, (5) ‘the small deaths’ and finally (6) ‘the hardening’.
This South African visual artist explores societal problems by observing human behaviour and the human psyche. In his highly publicised series Abstract Peaces, Maela foregrounds the challenges of navigating the topographies of mental disorder, while finding one’s sense of self. The series is a visual diary of the artist's own experience with depression and anxiety, revealing personal moments of solitude and silence, disassociation and dejection, recovery and re-emergence.
A freelance photographer exploring the issues of identity politics and the miscellaneous yet interrelated nature of African culture. In a photographic series, Choumali documents the residents of Grand-Bassam, a resort town near the city of Abidjan, following terrorist attacks just 3 weeks prior. Both residents and atmosphere were said to be suffused with aloofness and melancholia. The title of the series ‘ça va aller’, is a common Ivorian expression which when translated, means “it will be okay” in English. Choumali hoped to address the erasure of psychological mental health issues in Côte d’Ivoire’, through a body of work that embraces the naturalness of collective post-traumatic states.
The Nigerian visual artist and self-taught documentary photographer focuses primarily on themes related to social injustice. It’s All In My Head, is an ongoing multimedia project featuring a series of photomontage portraits documenting the coping mechanisms of survivors of insurrection (particularly the Boko Haram insurgency) in Nigeria. The project is one of artivism and advocacy meant to garner greater mental health resources, to provide increased and long-term psychosocial support for victims of terrorism hoping to rebuild their lives.
Mental health disorders - due to the grips of ridicule and prejudice - have been undermined as legitimate forms of illness and instead framed as phenomena of weakness. Hence, despite many attempts to destigmatize the topic it remains either largely misunderstood, misdiagnosed or ignored, particularly within many African communities of colour. To ensure that those who are suffering seek the necessary care, (irrespective of race, culture, creed or gender), the challenge then is to continue to reconfigure mental health outside of the historical prisms of shame and stigma.
Drawing from either surrealism, afro-futurism, or fiction the two series by Eloghosa Osunde and Tsoku Maela assign an absent visual language able to describe and manifest the often veiled tribulations of mental illness. Through photographic series, Joana Choumali and Etinosa Yvonne Osayimwen represent the remnants of disquietude and sorrow in communities beleaguered by the trauma of terrorism.
Residing in each of the series is a message, when encountering those individuals faltering in the aftermath of conflict or gripped by internal struggle, to remember your tenderness.
