Artist Preetha Mahadevan brought recurring dream imagery, environmental concern and her lived experience of bipolar disorder together in A Brush With Madness.
The 2022 display at Apparao Galleries was the first in Musings of the Mind, a series organised by The Banyan and The Other Identity Fellowship with reference to Art Brut and outsider-art traditions.
Birds, faces and a damaged environment
Mahadevan’s paintings included birds, human faces and images of the earth. She described birds as a recurring presence in her dreams, sometimes imagined gathering to discuss what human beings had done to the environment.
The work used those private images to approach a public concern. Environmental damage appeared not as a detached theme but as something filtered through memory, fear and repeated thought.
Twenty paintings were shown in the gallery, while a related book collected 60 works made for The Banyan.
Art and openness about mental health
Mahadevan described art as therapeutic and argued against secrecy around mental health. For her, openness and the willingness to ask for help were necessary first steps.
The organisers used the exhibition to question conventional boundaries around artistic legitimacy. Vandana Gopikumar of The Banyan described the project as concerned not only with outsider art, but with “outsider thought” from people affected by disability, mental illness, homelessness and social exclusion.
Proceeds from sales supported The Banyan. The exhibition therefore combined an individual practice with a wider programme intended to give public space to perspectives frequently treated as peripheral.
A Brush With Madness did not present art as a cure. It showed how making and exhibiting work could create language for experiences that were otherwise difficult to disclose.