Is This How You Feel?
A look at Federico Babina’s architectural illustrations and their portrayal of mental disorders
Italian architect and graphic artist Federico Babina’s project ‘Archiatric’ initially caught my eye because of its haunted patina; a hairy reflection of psychopathology. These images are dark, even nightmarish, but not without a sense of childlike wonder — a deliberate and recurring theme in Babina’s work.
The visuals interconnect complex lexicon of the architecture of the mind with illustrated architecture, according to Babina, and the exercise has not been in vain. Mildly allegorical in his use of houses to convey the inner workings of human psychology, Babina’s combines Saul Bass’ dark minimalism and kinetic type with jagged structural elements evocative of Cubist influences.
The concept of minds as buildings also makes a timely return through ‘Archiatric’, given growing interest in neuroaesthetics and how individuals, sensory stimuli, and context interact and affect cognition. The conversation around embodied cognition, or how our embodiment affects our thoughts, is intensifying as empirical research around it expands.
While Babina counts a great many influences that have shaped his art, he rigorously abstains from subscribing to specific movements, choosing to describe his body of work as a mosaic of protean experience and reference instead.
Feelings of inadequacy and consequent alienation are frequently described as concomitant to art. Regardless of the degree of labour put in by an artist, it is never sufficiently satisfying to the artists themselves. This is followed by perceived silent disapproval of others, even if it may not really exist.
When quizzed about whether he had experienced this phenomenon and how he coped with it, Babina admits to buying into theories that link mental imbalance with the development of imaginative attitudes and innovation that are characteristic of creative production.
In Problemata XXX for example, offers Babina, Aristotle associates melancholy with ingenuity, in a time where melancholy was one of the most serious mental illnesses known, and which today is classified as the most ubiquitious among troubles of the humor, symptomatic of depressive syndrome and / or manic-depressive psychosis.
He clarifies, however, that art is merely a form of expression, indicating that feelings of insufficiency and estrangement are precursors to artistic behaviour and not its result. Babina maintains that art simply provides a creative outlet to help reflect on things and express a different and subjective point of view.
This is interesting in its implication that an inability to express may therefore be largely responsible for aggravation of psychological unrest. Suppresion of public emotional displays is a key tenet in transnational culture. Expressing emotions is OK, but only so long as it meets a certain criteria of propriety. Sure enough, processing and regulation of emotions is a recurring symptom in most mental disorders, calling into question the role of this constant curbing of emotions and the resultant inexperience in managing and communicating thoughts.
The ‘Archiatric’ series can be viewed in full here, along with the rest of Federico Babina’s work.
