Resounding Remnants: Art and the Echo of Lived Experience
For readers in the tri-state area, Chanika Svetvilas’s solo exhibition, Resounding Remnants, is on view at the Hunterdon Art Museum, 7 Lower Center Street, Clinton, NJ 08809, until January 11, 2026. This post aims to make the work accessible to a wider audience beyond those who can visit in person. In this post, Chanika shares her journey and process in the creation of the work.
Presenting my first solo museum show, Resounding Remnants, gave me the opportunity to reflect on my artistic journey, which unfolded alongside a shift in my mindset from disability rights to disability justice.
Before the Covid pandemic, as a result of hospitalizations, discrimination, and stigma, I was focused on fighting for my individual rights and access to the care and support that I needed. However, five years ago, I learned about Sins Invalid’s ten principles of disability justice, which include commitments to cross-movement organizing and cross-disability solidarity. No one is left behind. The principles also recognize intersectionality, interdependence, and the leadership of those impacted.
Around the same time, I attended IDHA’s course series, Psychologies of Liberation: Human Arts in a Global Context, which invited me to see beyond the American medical industrial complex. Suddenly, I not only had the language for my own experience, but also felt connected to a larger community who shared it. I realized then that the art I wanted to create was for my community – an intersectional one, a disabled one, filled with mad pride. My desire to communicate the remnants of my bipolar memories, from mania to hospitalizations, and to interrogate clinical care motivated me to produce a new body of work and visual vocabulary.
As a result, I have reconfigured the residue of my bipolar experiences into drawings, sculptures, and performative actions. My material choices capture my mental health experience. For example, I use charcoal as a transformative material because in activated form, it absorbs chemicals in the stomach lining – a fact I discovered after an overdose of sleeping pills. I use prescription bottles in sculptures to represent medical cocktails, side effects, and the cycle of healthcare consumerism and the search for wellbeing.
I incorporate text from the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM, the source of my diagnosis) to question my complex relationship with it – as a document that inadequately describes my way of being and pathologizes human experience. At the same time, my diagnosis gives me access to care and connection with a community that identifies with being bipolar, despite the limitations of the label.
EXIT
2024, charcoal and collage on illustration board panels, 60 x 90 inches
Image description: A magnified bipolar sensory neuron is anthropomorphized bending forward with my photocollaged screaming mouth in place of the cell body and dendrites reaching out. Its three axons stretch out like a newborn foal. It screams at a backwards exit sign wishing to be on the other side. Above the exit is an upside down lined portrait cameo of Benjamin Rush, the father of modern psychiatry. A UPC symbol obstructs his face. The emblematic portrait is from the title page of the DSM (Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). On the left edge, backwards and turned on its side is the diagnostic number for bipolar. The background for these figures is an outline of a foldout of a box for the anti-psychotic medication, Risperdal. The Jansen branding and name is prominently repeated. Handwritten on the right turned on its side is the following text: “I could not walk, but I could shuffle. I could not talk, but I could mumble. I could not run, but my thoughts could race. I could still breathe. I can still remember. I will not forget.” Handwritten on the bottom a sentence states, “As I reached for the exit, the nurses held me down.”
On the title page of the DSM, Benjamin Rush’s portrait is illustrated prominently as the father of modern psychiatry. He is one of the United States’ Founding Fathers – an abolitionist who simultaneously characterized being black as a hereditary and a curable skin disease, and whose primary treatment for ailments was bloodletting. The complications of Rush as a figurehead are represented in my drawing in various ways: upside down, with his face crossed-out, or covered with a UPC symbol.
My handwritten text and evidence of smears and fingerprints convey resistance to the coldness of clinical medical treatment, disparities in healthcare access, and expected patterns of behavior. My protest and call for visibility are emphasized in the screaming anthropomorphic bipolar neuron that has become an alter ego – a neuron named for its shape. My mouth replaces the cell soma as dendrites reach out above for sensory information, and the feet like axons communicate its messages outward. The bipolar neuron communicates our human senses to the brain. I wanted to be inclusive of how our experiences are embodied beyond the visual.
The folded out packaging of psychiatric meds reflects my intertwined journey between prescriptions, healthcare consumerism, and lived experiences of bipolar mania and depression along with side effects. To emphasize my voice, my handwritten thoughts, experiences, and word associations contrast with the impersonal, rigid lines of copied pharma logos and text – lines my unsteady hand is unable to perfectly replicate. The messages are sometimes cryptic as I do not need to disclose everything, only what I choose to share. “I wanted to go home, but I kept walking backwards.” is a phrase that appears in multiple drawings. Though it happened during a manic episode, I also see it as a metaphor for my hospitalizations. The use of the Thai kranok (notch and curve flame) pattern acknowledges my Thai heritage. The word “EXIT” appears in all caps to emphasize the signage but remains backwards to pose the question of which side of the “EXIT” one is on.
Destigmatize
2025, square orange safety net, origami anthurium and leaves, acrylic paint, chopsticks, dowels, dimensions variable, 45 x 45 inches
Image description: Attached with green clothes pins are varnished red origami anthurium made from pages of the DSM (Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). The green origami leaves are made from the pages of the textbook, Pharmacology for Nursing Care, 8th edition by Richard A. Lehne. Visitors were invited to take an anthurium and/or leaf. Origami folded by Ms. Bridget Schmidt’s art class, 3D Studio Art Teacher, Princeton High School.
My material archive includes medical textbooks, pamphlets, documentation, and ubiquitous prescription bottles. All come to play in my work. I cut out pages from the DSM to create origami anthurium – the hospitality flower of Thailand, with its prominent pistil and stigma. Painted red and varnished, they were offered to the public as a takeaway and as a symbolic way to “destigmatize.” I appreciate the double-entendre: stigma is not only a mark of disgrace that I have experienced, but also the part of the flower that initiates fertilization after the flower has bloomed.
Round and Round She Goes. Where she stops, no one knows!
2023, acrylic gems, spinning arrows, beads, dice, plastic letters, jingle bells, bell, prescription bottles, doll eyes, orange spray paint, plastic toys, globe stress ball, artificial anthurium, doll hands, plastic figurines, galvanized wire, plywood, rotating motor Dimensions variable: 18 inch diameter x 14 inches x 12 inches
Image description: When my mom drew the numbers on a clock the sequence was correct, 1-12, but the spacing was 1-6 due to her dementia. This is how the numbers appear on this orange painted disc. The objects of red dice, puff balls for comfort, world stress ball, action heroes, and ambulance are composed chaos. As the disc rotates the jingle bells sewn on the perimeter with wire, ring and a single brass bell rings once with each turn. Brown rubber hands also turn like hands of a clock with each rotation. Two large red anthurium with prominent stigma are tied opposite each other. Weaving through across the disc are multiple undulating wired brass, silver, and orange beads wrapping and holding objects. In the center is a cluster of prescription bottles. The white caps each have brown dolls eyes and some have spinning arrows.
Prescription bottles show up in my work in a variety of ways – melted, distorted, embellished, and combined with found objects to create new meaning. In my latest work, Round and Round She Goes! Where she stops, no one knows!, the amber bottles form the centerpiece of a motorized rotating orange disk. Multicolored doll eyes glued to the white caps return the gaze, while intricate beaded lines reach out to wrap figurines like Captain America, an ambulance, and an earth-shaped stress ball. Doll hands replace clock hands and the numbers 1-12 are squished to fill a half circle, echoing a clock my mother had drawn during her dementia. Jingle bells line the circumference of the sculpture, with a single large bell tolling once with each rotation. I use bells in my sculptures as warning signs or signals. The prominent stigma of the red anthurium draws attention. Clusters of red dice symbolize chance and orange puff balls provide a cushion of comfort.
I want the public to feel my work in their bodies, and I am attentive to how they navigate the space. Rest, reflection, and recovery are a part of the work, so I have begun incorporating ways to provide comfort. I created a bench cushion made from the red and white stripes of the United States flag, which I deconstructed and resewed with a Thai woven textile featuring an Ikat (zig zag) pattern of tan, red, and green at the center. The Thai flag shares the colors red, white, and blue. I also created a site-specific touchable, and huggable life-size fuzzy sculpture meant to relieve and soothe any sensory overstimulation. Made from pillows, throws, and stuffed animals sourced from thrift shops, the sculpture grants the fabrics new life and carries forward memories of past comfort. I wanted to create opportunities for the audience to reflect on and participate in works that resonate beyond the visual.
Between Stripes
2025, 15” x 67” x 2,” Cushions, red and white stripes from the U.S. flag, Thai woven ikat textile
Image description: Bench cushion is covered with the stripes of the U.S. flag and with a Thai woven ikat textile with tan, red, and green stripes at its center. The US flag and Thai flag share the red, white and blue colors, but the red and white stripes are the ones that have similar symbolism of sacrifice. Visitors were invited to rest on this bench and reflect on how we inhabit identities.
Pillar of Support
2025, dimensions variable, sculpture is site specific, crochet and shag throws, comforter, rugs, stuffed animal appendages, yarn; assistance provided by Susan Freeman
Image description: This installation transforms a structural pillar into white soft, tactile sculpture, wrapped in plush appendages that evoke the warmth of care and human connection. The white pillar references clinical environments, while the layered furry fabrics invite playful touch, interaction and communal engagement. By combining the pillar with softness and warmth, the work explores interdependence, comfort, and the relational nature of support. Visitors are encouraged to touch, sit, and gather around the sculpture, experiencing care as both physical and emotional – a shared embrace that turns architectural support into human connection.
This new body of work affirms my experiences as I embrace my mad pride and cultural heritage as a Thai American. It motivates me to be an advocate for accessibility and community care because of our interdependence. By creating this work, I am composing my own narrative in contrast to the clinical one that is in my medical file – one that does not accurately reflect who I am. My disability has generated a new way of perceiving and being.
Chanika Svetvilas is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural worker based in Princeton Junction, NJ. Her solo exhibition, Resounding Remnants, is on view at the Hunterdon Art Museum through January 11, 2026. Her exhibition catalogue is available for purchase at Mixam.
Chanika is giving an artist talk, Catalogue Launch & Conversation on Saturday, November 22 at 2 pm at the Hunterdon Art Museum, 7 Lower Center Street, Clinton, NJ 08809.
This work was made possible in part by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant and A Blade of Grass.
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