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SEEN utilizes projected video, sound art, and live performance to offer glimpses of Bodett’s lived experience with schizophrenia and how he navigates the territory of language.
SEEN is a language-based performance examining schizophrenic language as the artist experienced it. While it is not a direct translation of the experience, it does explore the abstract representations of language, the loss of signifiers, and the societal pressures of purpose in communication. This also challenges the ways in which society condemns abnormal language while championing explorative expressions in poetic contexts, explorations, which often mirror or directly steal from the ideas of madness. Having been diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder in 2005 he has continually sought an understanding himself and the world around him.
Performance run time: 45 minutes
After being diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in 2005, Bodett graduated with an MFA from Boise State University in 2011 and moved to Chicago shortly afterward to pursue a more full time studio practice. He utilizes visual art, performance art, poetry, video, and sound to advocate for a better, more human, connection with mental illnesses. His work removes stigma and creates unique settings for understanding one’s relationships to mental health and disability at large.
He has been a 3Arts/Bodies of Work Fellow, a 2019 Incubator Artist with High Concept Laboratories, a 2019 MacDowell Fellow, and has exhibited work Internationally. Matt Bodett serves on the Advisory Board for the Institute for Therapy Through the Arts and on the 3Arts Artist Council.
