On Mass Hysteria

This artist's book, which combines photographs, texts and testimonies, explores the thematic of the societal oppression of women through the mise en abyme of thousands cases of what has long been called "mass hysteria." This phenomenon, triggered by serious trauma, affects communities closely knit, faced with major stressful situations. These groups then develop sudden symptoms without any physiological cause, which can last for months: fainting, trembling, fits of laughter inextinguishable, trances… As usual, the artist worked in advance with anthropologists, sociologists, psychiatrists to try to understand the origin of these crises. Through numerous archives, Laia Abril shows their formidable geographical and temporal extent. From the witches of Salem to 15th century possessed nuns convulsing to schoolgirls from a Mexican boarding school who suddenly lose their ability to walk or Cambodian workers who simultaneously faint, Laia Abril studies the circumstances that lead to this state. These mass psychogenic diseases, such which they are called today, appear as a common response to a collective suffering which, for various reasons, cannot be verbalized, embodying transgenerational traumas, often ignored or minimized by society. Some scientists interpret them as a protolanguage that women have been using it to resist since the dawn of time, without being conscious. Laia Abril questions the Western conception, in particular hypermedicalization which ignores the suffering of women, and tends to neglecting explanations based on spiritual beliefs and forces of the mind. The artist seeks to move the analysis, from a narrative that makes responsible victims, towards examining the role of political oppression and social impact of women in the manifestation of a collective illness.