On the verge of a nervous breakdown, an identification of Hysteria

Krystal Ramirez
"On the verge of a nervous breakdown, an identification of Hysteria"
(2022)
Plexi, transparency film
Courtesy the artist.

I am inspired by intergenerational relationships between immigrants and their children born in the United States. Specifically, traditional mother/daughter relationships and how they are formed by cultural ideologies, popular culture, desire, and capitalism. In this work, I look to the movie Women on The Verge of a Nervous Breakdown by Pedro Almodovar. A film about women who are caused to suffer and the ways – comic and tragic – in which they vent their anger. This work utilizes modular photographic units created by taking screenshots of the entire movie to conceive an abstract narrative and tactile objects that prize corporeal awareness in psychological processing. While reading the non-linear account of the film, one is asked to listen to an altered song of La Lupe, titled Puro Teatro, in which she exclaims, "Just like on a stage, you fake your cheap pain, your drama is not necessary, I already know that it's all theater.”

My artwork leans into the physical and emotional in attempts to examine the legacy of patriarchal narratives buried in Westernized constructs of language and built space.