HYSTERIA
2025

“Hysteria” explores the historically sexist condition that pathologized women’s emotions, tracing its effects through generations of women — myself, my sister and my mother. Historically, hysteria was used as a medical diagnosis to label women’s emotions as irrational or uncontrollable, reinforcing control over their bodies and minds. By linking our personal experiences, I aim to investigate how the echoes of this condition persist today, even if the term itself has fallen out of clinical use. Each of us has experienced moments where our emotions were dismissed or invalidated, shaped by societal expectations to remain calm and composed, while any deviation from this norm was met with judgment or misunderstanding. The project transforms suppressed emotions into a shared visual language, reimagining them as a site of resistance.

Using archival family photographs into a visual critique through physical manipulation and unorthodox materials by dissecting the shared emotional landscape of our lives. The album photos, once a record of familial memory, become sites of disruption. I juxtapose the intimate with the chaotic, visually embodying the tension between societal ideals of composed femininity and the raw reality of emotional expression. Each manipulated photograph carries the tension of its manipulation.