For the past two years, we have put together virtual exhibitions for our Members’ Events, featuring creative pieces by folks in our network, including photography, drawings, and poetry. This year, we’re doing the same again. The idea is to have somewhere bringing together artwork by people who identify as Mad, neurodivergent, and/or having lived experience of mental ill-health, distress, or trauma in the UK.
Please note that images, videos and words below may be subject to copyright – please do not reuse any of the works below without permission.
Mud
You can find out more about Mud and view more of their work on their website and their Instagram page, @creator_mud.
Bekah Harris
This piece was originally created for an exhibition called “‘BPD’: Beyond the Label” at 42nd Street.
You can find Bekah on Twitter @100beks where you can read more about this piece on this thread.
Anon
On the borderline —
I am torn between two worlds
Lives running in parallel
The living and the dead
In a rocket and in sinking sand
Glass simultaneously half full and half empty
I am the fury of fire, the flood and the wind
I am
I am.
Silently screaming
Drowning
A smile on my face
Seeking a way out
Imploding bleeding
Invisibly
An empty shell
A car crash
With no airbag
Minefields and fences for miles
No man’s land
Doors and chains
I threw away the keys
I built walls upon walls upon walls
The light’s gone
I feel safe
But
There’s no getting out.
Every word, look, scream
Invisible imprint on my skin
Suffocating affection
Smothering and protection
I have no direction
Balanced yet
Spiralling
Gasping for air
Drowning in despair
Mutilation
Self destruction
A let down
A broken soul
I’m not here but
I try to keep going
Find strength when there is nothing left
And just keep on existing.
Vykky Ebner
You can view more of Vykky’s work on Instagram @vykkydammit.
Martin Vallis
Martin is an artist, photographer, lived experience practitioner and educator. Once a commercial photographer, he now shoots only on his iPhone, saying he enjoys the freedom it brings. You can find out more about Martin and view more of his art on his website. Martin’s prints are for sale on Artmajeur and Saatchi Art.
Claire
You can find more of Claire’s work on her Instagram page, @oeuff_gallery.
Heather Cobb
“This is part self portrait and part trying to come to terms with how random chaos of mental healthcare. I feel that some people survive mental illness and the healthcare system, while others don’t and I’m troubled that we are living so many people. I was thinking about why I call myself lucky, what privileges I have and the hope I hold for the future.”
“This was inspired by talking with members of the OSDD and DID community on Mad Twitter about memory and dreams. I tried to capture the shades of reality, traumatic memory recall and the way survivors process gaps in what can be known.”
Jessie Jones
Visit Jessie’s Viewbug profile here.
Rachel Rowan Olive
This illustration was printed in Asylum Magazine, 2022.
Rachel is a mental heath survivor researcher, trainer, writer, and illustrator. You can find out more and view more of her work on her website and visit her Etsy shop by clicking here.
Steph Clark
Steph is a writer and illustrator specialising in mental health, mental illnesses and grief, based in South East UK. You can find out more about Steph and view more of her work on her website, Creative Steph.
Roz (Batty Makes)
Roz is an artist focussing primarily on mental health themes. You can view more of her work on her Instagram (@Batty_Makes) and Facebook page, and you can buy prints of her artwork on her Etsy shop. She donates 50% of profits to mental health charities.
Michelle Baharier
Michelle is a multimedia and interdisciplinary fine artist. She was the CEO, Founder, and Artistic Director of CoolTan Arts, an arts in mental health charity run by and for people with mental distress, for over 25 years. You can find out more about Michelle on her website: michellebaharier.co.uk and you can buy her work via her Etsy or Saatchi Art shops.
Tony Fisher
Tony is a photographic artist who looks through the lens and captures what he sees transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary, seizing the moment. Tony wants to explore and research loneliness, isolation and well-being, something he has battled with personally for over 40 years. You can see more of Tony’s work on his website. You can also visit his YouPic portfolio here.
Ninette Osei Wilson
You can find Ninette on Instagram at @ninette_osei.
Dave Sohanpal
O – ReFUGEE
ReFUGEE- Who or what I am?
This is new name I am given in this new place
I didn’t choose this name nor did I have a choice
Am I an object, number or a person?
Does my brith name means nothing now?
Has my past been erased?
As I bare this new name- ReFUGEE?
Branded on my forehead like a cattle
Pardon but please hold your applause for these parables and stories
Let’s talk about it, this life, this broken system
Cause when you got a story real as mine
You can’t leave nothing out it, as a man with more true shit
Than what he knows to do with
So I pen this to pad and dispersing these feelings
Every time you Home Office talk about me, it makes the news like The Daily Mail
Für Ihre Sicherheit -For your safety, a buzz word you coined
From ‘go home’ vans to Windrush scandal
The culture of fear has not altered in anyway
Your racial slur and double entendre left me confused
A political tool I am, a dog whistle to set the gullible barking when there’s no bus available.
Why do you hate me?
Cause I am not blonde, blue eyes or WHITE !!!
Am I not human with feeling and emotions, just like you?
Am I wrong to ask protection?
Or want to feel safe?
What crimes have I committed?
Only to be stripped away of all my rights
And regelated to zero to break my soul
Put in a cage like an animal and ill treated
And you know they will never stop the furious force
Been kicked around like a tin can
One is punished for claiming asylum in the UK
First you deny our experiences, then misrepresenting our motives
Saying they are a threat only to delegitimating our presence
Just because that’s where you get your misinformation from
Don’t tar the rest of us with your biased brush
Seems that life is just a constant battle between fear and uncertainty
The situation that I am facing is mad crazy
The anxieties that I wish I could alleviate
So I normalize these normal lies
If you really knew my struggles you would ask me how
They think we are dumb cause where we came from
We were kings and queen where we come from never porch monkeys
Legacy so ingrained in the way that we think
That we no longer need chains to be slaves
Walked through the world, the whole shit is just one giant catastrophe
This eyes have seen beauty and pain
ReFUGEE,…. I wear this name like a badge of honour only for you
To hurt and shame me as if I am nothing
and only to be left out, In the cold like bad smell
You critique my flaws and don’t speak of yours
You only show the effects and never speak of the cause
The system is rigged and I the pawn in their game
They expect us to fail
I got no help, no voice and am financially castrated
Everyday I ask myself who, what I am?
The average person wouldn’t survive what the things I have been thru
I am told where to sit, what to eat but not to think or speak my mind
What I am suppose to do while I wait for a decision?
Stay Idle, wasting my youth rotting away in a cell?
Trapped in this hamster wheel, Now 20 years gone by…bye
Time is non existent.. like forever in this traumatic moment
I had a nightmare that anxiety is taking over
Afraid of being manic depressive
I don’t know who or where to turn
So how putting me in well is good for my well being?
All I feel is nothing, it’s a numbness like no other
I am trying to get this foot off my neck so I can breathe clear
We ReFUGEE get it from both sides of this hostile environment
From the unapologetic asinine solicitor Georgina, a congenital liar
her tongue is sharp like a harpoon only to spew lies
A spiteful cretin that will sabotage your case with her fallacy
and rub it in your face, we get paid in full regardless
Then you tried concealed your mistakes with remarkable aplomb
Was aggressively passive to the point
What you thought I cause I am brown, from a Banana Republic so I must be dumb?
Don’t you think I can’t see your evil vindictive fallacious jabs?
When I called out your negligences, your pride and ego got dented!
And these are the racist JCWI anathemas ways
Why all these meretricious charlatans want to test my patience like blood sample?
Shame to take my kindness for weakness and confuse it
Tried to back door me…..to exacerbate my PTSD
Your duty of care is only to milk us like a cash cows
I am only here to be exploited for your profit from my traumas
JCWI are endemically bereft of good faith and chronically unable to tell the truth
Who are only here to capitalize on my traumas
Masking it for years while trying to appear cool to the public
Act like I don’t care but really fear if they don’t love me
Lately, my thoughts been dark, a monstrous
I can’t tell if this is true or dream
Deep down inside I feel these trauma is consuming me
This terrible silence stops my screams
I cannot stand this hell I feel,
Wonder if therapy can take care of this monsters?
Emptiness is filling me to the point of agony
and I am still depressed
I hold my breath as I wish for death
Only the mirror knows my pain
You race towards an early grave
Someday you will know my pain and smile.
I suffer from excess anxiety
A product of pollution of the hostile environment
Speak on mental health, people laugh at me
That is why I tapped out
Sometimes it feels odd when there’s no one you can relate to
Like nobody understands and everybody just hates you
And you wanna run and hide ’cause the loneliness won’t escape you
And everything that’s different about you is all that made you
How often must I ask myself why do I exist?
I feel like a freak, in this world that is a circus
I am just trying to find myself as well as my purpose
Even paralyse people have to stand for something
I don’t need to defend my defensiveness
Even though the pressure is on me, can’t let it fuck with my focus
So understand all the pressure we hold
Will I succumb or will my heart grow numb?
Or will I save myself from this living hellish nightmare or will I end it all?
I am ready to lose my mind, but instead I use my mind
To stay strong and weather this storm
Only difference is I am stronger and better from when I have begun
Does this paper defines who I am?
Am I still a ReFUGEE once I got this paper that you love so much
We should change the subject but this is what I lived thru and know
We are all being led down dead end rabbit holes
By shills spouting disinformation on all sides
Trick, tricked into think that you have freedom
The deck is stacked against me
How are we a society that grudges someone seek shelter when they have nowhere else to go
Now want to farm me, us out like animals
To an exotic hotel……Hotel Rwanda
When did I become a commodity?
More of Patel’s incompetence and Johnson’s bovine excreta
Your oppression, aggression and hate we are refusing
If you really want change then rewrite the constitution
But that’s the one solution that they are not doing!
Don’t give me those fake tears when I am gone
If my blood saves your child’s life
Will you tell me ReFUGEE go back home
Or will you call me your brother?
FUCK!!… Social Division
Open your mind and maybe you can see the millions
Of people that are separated and been displaced, but we should all be equal
We are all humans
That is the way we need to treat and see each other
Whats better to be loved or feared?
Truth comes to the light behind it all
I prepare to face the moment of truth
Will my gravestone be marked “ Here Lies ReFUGEE “ ?
This is what I am……A HUMAN BEING!
Who will put the MAN back in HuMANity?
Thank you very much, your friend S110011…..A ReFUGEE
You can find Dave on Instagram at @davesohanpal1.
Richard Downes
Richard is a poet, photographer and trainer. He is an Associate Artist with Disability Arts Online and an Artist/Ambassador with Outside In.
Robert Koch
Light
The future may seem uncertain
The path ahead obscure
We are challenged daily
With ever-shifting rules
And sombre foreboding news
Fuelling the potential to feel
Sad and cheated fools
Despite the darkness
And brooding horizon
Small things serve to illuminate
To light the path ahead
Making living today more bearable
And fostering hope for tomorrow instead
A tender smile
A baby’s gurgle
A handwritten letter
A stranger’s kindness
Dewdrops on plump petals
Shimmering and glistening
A double rainbow piercing the grey
All unexpected tiny pleasures
Brighten a dismal day
A glass half empty
Upturned to be half full
Perhaps the greatest lesson
Fate may write the script
But we own the voice
And subtle inflexion
To shape the hand we are dealt
When all is said and done
It is we who are the masters
To dictate a life well spent
DEPRESSION
Depression is hell. The most challenging thing I have experienced in my whole life. You cannot know anything about it unless you have been there. It is unimaginable, unfathomable, indescribable. Pain.
I read so often of the black dog and the dark veil, and I could not yet comprehend how they applied to me- but they did. And then I found myself writing about it too.
What they do not tell you is you cannot see the veil until the light shines on it a bit. You do not know the cover is on; it is just dark. And if it’s dark enough for long enough, you will want a way out. That is why I suddenly understood why people take their own lives. I thought it was the only option for a while
I am Depression!!
I am Depression. I own you. I hold you still if I like and control your movements. I manage your thoughts and ensure they do not stop. I am unkind and dangerous. I am mysterious, sly, and versatile. I want to stop your functioning. I like the stilted dishes pile up, conversations and shame to conquer. I want to destroy relationships. I want you to lose faith in yourself and your loved ones. I am relentless and reign supreme.
For whoever I am, I am not putting up with this nonsense anymore. I will find a way around you. I will indeed succeed and win out. You are not and never will be stronger than me. You will not destroy me. I do not care how sly you can be; I have perseverance as you have never seen. I know I am liked and loved by many. I know my family cares. I am upset about how they ignore it; that is OK. But under it all, they are my reason for living, and you cannot take that away from me. I did not know the strength I had in me, but now I have seen it, and with both patience and perseverance, One thing is for sure I will never give up!!!
Hope
Sail, vast boat, across my dreams.
But oh, how far the magic seems.
Is it the distance between a closed and open heart
Which decides our great flowering start?
And are we groomed for our brainwashed roles,
At the expense of our starved and thirsty souls?
And yet … the sun is always on call.
It is those clouds that prime us for fall.
Can we feel the sky with an upward prayer?
Can we indeed be ourselves up there
Can the Butterfly wait fly another day?
Are the answers in your kind and loving way?
Can we keep you and never part?
And always carry the sky in our hearts?
Our pain tears our skies in two.
Could you help us make a fresh start, with you?
So, close your ears to other sounds,
And when you have looked and done the rounds,
Come back home, and once more meet,
The ‘you’ who is there and so complete.
Why can’t I float with you?
Here on earth, in all that is blue?
Come to us, and….
Repaint our rainbows.
Hold our heart in yours.
Swamp our hearts with love.
Touch our tender hearts with patience.
Fill our skies with dreams.
Flood our tears with answers.
And paint our dreams with life!