SICK BETTER
YIYUN CHEN (China)
A utopia for the elderly?
Sick Better presents a fictional home for the elderly through a series of paintings, each frame represents a room within this home, to tell ways to ‘use’ different symptoms. Each illness can, for example, become beneficial to the patient through manipulation and transformation, allowing the state of being unhealthy to create certain objects or effects. This would subvert the effects of time and joy, improving the living conditions and quality of life for the patient. Equally, the positive association with productivity can increase the dignity and mental wellbeing of the patient, as their state is no longer debilitating but enabling. In this home, 'unwellness' is seen as a neutral or even positive productive condition. By making chronic symptoms 'useful', this project advocates a neutral attitude towards 'unwellness' in an aging society.
Yiyun Chen received a MA in Design Interactions at Royal College of Art in London, and a diploma of Traditional Chinese Medicine at Shanghai University of TCM. Her current interests focus on the intersections between art, psychology and medicine, and her artworks explore ideologies associated with human disease and wellness. ‘Sick Better’ was nominated for The Helen Hamlyn Design Awards.