On Mass Hysteria

Artist Laia Abril (Spain, 1986) uses photography, archival documents and multimedia to create her highly political projects, often related to feminist issues and imbued with sociological, historical and anthropological insights. Her long-term projects are structured into different chapters. The artist will be presenting her latest project at Photo Elysée: On Mass Hysteria (Genesis Chapter), the first draft of which led to her nomination for the Prix Elysée (2018-2020). Mass hysteria is a reaction to circumstances in which women are under extreme stress, feel repressed, or are forced into situations where they cannot communicate or express their thoughts and emotions. On Mass Hysteria allows us to visualise this language of the pain of female representation throughout history.

Evil witches were accused and executed in Salem, while possessed nuns meowed and had seizures across Europe. Hand-trembling epidemics spread among Swiss and German boarding schools, and laughing attacks were widespread among Tanzanian girls students. Female adolescents in Afghanistan experienced fainting outbreaks, while over 600 boarding schoolgirls suddenly lost the ability to walk straight at a boarding school in Mexico. In Cambodian garment factories, thousands of women faint inexplicably during the last decade, and American cheerleaders tick compulsively and have seizures without a biological explanation.

Mass hysteria, or Mass psychogenic disorder – a term now more widely accepted – arises in tightly knit environments burdened by unbearable and inescapable social circumstances. When a stress trigger event unfolds, the group starts experiencing uncontrollable motor symptoms simultaneously, such as trembling, weeping, twitching, ticking, or even fainting. These involuntary symptoms, often resembling trance-like states, can persist for months and have non-organic origins. Although studied from diverse cultural and academic interpretations, two essential questions remain unresolved: How does it spread, and why does it predominantly affect young women, especially teenage girls?

Historically, the term hysteria has been employed to pathologize women perceived as "difficult." Medical historian Robert Woolsey suggests it could serve as a "protolanguage," with its symptoms functioning as "a code used to convey a message which, for various reasons, cannot be verbalized."

Laia Abril (Barcelona, 1986) is a multidisciplinary artist whose works centre around the themes of women's rights, grief, and bio-politics. Her research-based practice employs photography, text, and sound to explore difficult and hidden realities. One of her most acclaimed projects, "A History of Misogyny," has been exhibited in over 15 countries, and her artworks are held in collections such as the Centre Pompidou and FRAC in France, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and the Musée de l'Elysée and Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland. Her career has earned her numerous accolades, including the 2016 Prix de la Photo in Arles, the 2020 FOAM Paul Huf Award in Amsterdam, the 2022 Hood Medal in London, and the 2023 Shpilman Award.

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