naturally, my variety of interests has drawn me to the artwork of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. a personal favorite is adolf wolfli (swiss, ~1900), who spent most of his life in psychiatric wards. he even supposedly had an alter ego in his art world, named saint adolf:

some themes in the work of people like this are oddly resonant with my own art path. for example, in this image, the way of engaging with the picture plane and the sort of chunky visionary style is almost like early or non-western illuminated manuscripts (second image, ethiopia)

in the same folder, its hard not to see the similarity between the characteristic schizo “density”, seen in the first image, and something like celtic carpet pages (from illuminated manuscripts). the “religious style” touches the “insane style” somewhere. how interesting.

it seems totally unrelated, but comics also enters the picture here. comics bridge visuals and words into one communication method. the below page (from adolf) could be from a graphic novel. but, being in a mental hospital around 1900, he probably never saw such a thing.

using words and text together is also an illuminated manuscript thing. part of the western esoteric mindset is bridging these information categories. how “is” language also number? how “is” music also “shape” (kepler, pythagoras, etc.)? - this is also found in “schizophrenia”:

in doors of perception by huxley, he essentially posits that there is a space where drugs, religion, and art meet. i would revise this today as saying there is, clearly, a space where “insanity”, religion, and art meet. everyone knows this already, but its still nice to look at.

some more of his work:

Lover: I thought I had lived, but she was the one who was living me

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.” — Journals (1847)

I like art that's really angry and yet I'm no longer making art that's really angry.

'Lorem ipsum' refers to placeholder text to demonstrate the visual style of a document, webpage, or typeface. It doesn't mean anything. The point of 'lorem ipsum' is that it looks realistic enough to work as a demonstration, yet signifies nothing. Weirdly relatable, huh?

Working across collage, drawing, painting and archival material, Vora approaches memory not as a stable record but as a shifting and lived process, shaped by loss, transmission and repetition.

Notes from the Underground aka The Adjacent Socials Neighborhood: The Impacts of Activating The WE - Thee Collective Consciousness - Failed Investigations Into Unknown Histories Acquired Thru Unknown Tools - Post Racial Aftermath - Interstellarsocialized.