Assumption

Mixed media on canvas

30 x 30 inches

2020

About

“M.” Mater. Material. Mother. My interests in memory, neuroscience and societal norms merge in this piece. Years later, as I study Sanskrit, reciting the alphabet, the sound “Bah Bah Mah Mah” relates to the navel point chakra. The scholars whom I work with suggest these are sounds heard while still in the womb.

During the time when this piece was created, my work was heavily influenced by my counseling practice. Establishing a private practice in a city with a population 40% at or below poverty level alongside rigid religious principles enmeshed in the culture posed unique challenges. Putting it plainly, this art work is about an assumption that people with mental disease are less worthy of love than other people. It’s “trauma informed.” Being an observer as a therapist and participant as a client, I see that many people with mental health disorders get caught up in a hierarchical system and are dictated their truths, essentially disallowed or too fearful to actualize on their own. Told they have an imperfection in their makeup (“it’s organic”), the belief becomes concretized and supported that they are flawed and therefore less worthy of love. The system is focused on pathology, a machine that needs fixing, a faulty circuit, without looking at the being in its entirety. It is a yang-based, logical system that needs an injection of the divine feminine.

Everything becomes a covert operation when behavior is driven by trauma. Societal norms cosign the suppression. Yet the problem goes beyond just the norms. It seeps into the epigenetics, the constructs, the fear of saying “no” – and the tribal mentality is thus perpetuated. It becomes embodied in the DNA to be considered “less-than”and therefore less worthy of passing through the Gates of Heaven to the Promised Land. No brass ring or golden ticket to ascend for you!

But what is assumed to be divine? How does a material body ascend into “heaven”? Did the Virgin Mary have neurodiversity? Did she have a psychotic disorder?

To help others reframe a “negative” assumptions, I pose a simple question, passed down to me from my therapist: “Why can’t the opposite be true?” For example, why can’t an affordable meal from a fast food place be nutritious? If we can think it, why can’t we materialize it?