Exhibition Statement

Jodie Mim Goodnough is a Providence-based artist who works with photography, new media, installation, sculpture, performance, and sound to engage with the issues related to psychology, psychiatry, health, and nature.

Focusing on the influence of environments on one’s mental health and well-being, this exhibition brings together work from multiple projects. For the series “Prospect,” Goodnough created contemporary views from the site of Victorian-era mental institutions in New England. Now the sites of condominiums and townhouses, these images tell the complicated story of psychiatric institutions in the United States. A participatory work, “Forest Therapy Pod,” speaks to the artist’s study of “forest therapy” in Japan. Her new media work “The Yellow Wallpaper” (referencing the story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman) invites the viewer on an experiential journey through a reconstructed contemporary psychiatric hospital while commenting on paternalistic approaches to mental health.

Collectively the works in this exhibition explore the impact of nature on one’s psychology and health.