United Mental States
United Mental States
United Mental States by Emma Verhoeven questions what happens in the media-saturated heads of young people. It imagines how feelings, dreams, fears and concerns of an online generation come together in a physical landscape. Performance pressure, motivation, loneliness and happiness are continents which invite you to self-reflect in a playful way.
In 2020 Emma Verhoeven exhibited the work Escape Here Now in MU. This escape room allowed visitors to visually and spatially explore the self-help media chaos in Verhoeven’s head. In the past year she investigated the therapeutic potential of this process with youngsters from Brabant. In workshops she invited students to imagine landscapes based on the chaos in their heads. These sessions resulted in a series islands in which the emotions and concerns of young people are literally given a place. These worlds not only visualize how young people feel, but also act as a film location for personal conversations about those feelings. World building as therapy.
