Our final project was to create a protective armor based on a social issue that personally upsets us. We had to make something to sit on our head, something to wear on our body or an object that can be held, and a garment. The materials that we were required to use were as follows: rigid wrap, cardboard, and “found” materials. Our goal was to get across the social ill we chose to cover and showcase a possible solution.
My armor is on the stigma that surrounds mental health and ways to fight it.
It took me some time to draw up a sketch of what I wanted my armor to look like and get all my supplies in order. In the beginning, I didn’t know what my chest piece should be until I decided to do some more research on my topic one night. It helped tremendously. I learned one of the ways to combat mental health stigma is by educating those around you and for those who struggle with mental health issues to be open about their experiences. That’s when I came up with the idea to make a journal/book.
It’s hard to be vulnerable and talk about your struggles, so the whole idea of the journal is supposed to give the wearer an option: share but do so when you’re ready. It is almost entirely made up of cardboard alongside the chest piece it is attached to, with the exception of the pages inside it and the heart and brain, both made of bristol paper. The heart and the brain were there to show that mental illness is just as important as physical illness and that it needs to be acknowledged more.
The hand was also cut from cardboard and then wrapped in the rigid wrap. It’s supposed to represent reaching out, and the heart in the palm represents receiving care and support. Unfortunately, the wrist attachment you see in the photo below fell off. It also got some unintended texture from me trying to add paint to the wrap and cardboard while it was damp.
As for the headpiece, the ear is meant to symbolize listening to people or loved ones who have dealt with mental health issues and not invalidating what they’ve gone through or what they’ve experienced. The chains hanging around my body is a call to how symptoms can be debilitating and weigh you down.
What I learned conceptually: Trying to convey social issues in a sort of abstract way instead of just writing out what they are, requires a lot of thinking and researching. You have to really know about that social ill and then find a way to convey that to someone using just symbols.