Exhibitions

CAROLYN HENNE: THIS IS MADNESS: A PROOF

Unrequited Leisure / 625-A 7th Ave. S. October 5, 2019 - October 27, 2019

Carolyn Henne

Hysteria, a term inextricably linked to female anatomy, was coined because women's concerns and complaints could only be understood through the lens of insanity or illness. To this day, women are perceived to embody madness as we cannot be trusted custodians of our own emotions.

Pick an -ism; it is crazy. Pick a war, pick a fight; lunacy.
Or each day the crises pick us, pummel us and steep us in turmoil.

Rage becomes us. No diagnosis is needed. This is not hysteria; it is the most rational state we can inhabit right now.

Carolyn Henne’s work contends with personal and public states of being. It does not easily ride on the currents of the cool and intellectual. It wallows in the prosaic but debilitating sentiments of the inner self that are unclaimed by the self that must maintain its profile in the world.

Carolyn Henne’s sculpture is largely informed by anatomical studies – from simple school-house diagrams to NIH’s Visual Human Project. Her work ranges from large, complex interactive installations and performances to more straightforward, discrete objects. Suspended Self Portrait is in the permanent collection at the National Museum of Health and Medicine and was featured in the NIH’s exhibition and catalog, Dream Anatomy.

Carolyn Henne is on the faculty of FSU’s Department of Art and serves as the Head of Sculpture. She also serves as the co-Director of Comma, a project housed at the Facility for Arts Research (FAR).