10 things about Fiona Tan: Monomania

Fiona Tan has taken the painting Portrait of a Kleptomaniac (c. 1822) by the French artist Théodore Géricault as a starting point to explore her fascination with the origins of psychiatry. This painting is part of a series of ten portrait studies, of which only five have survived. The titles, and thus the labels they bear, were most likely invented forty years after Géricault painted them. The man looks askance. He does not look at Géricault and therefore not at us. His face remains an impenetrable mask.

In the 19th century, monomania is defined as a form of partial or temporary insanity driven by a single pathological obsession. Little is known about the woman in this photo other than her diagnosis: monomania. Immediately after the invention of photography, doctors were eager to use this new technology as a diagnostic aid. Ultimately, the medical use of photography would prove to be limited, but patients are given a face, their individual suffering is captured by the camera.

Sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt spent the last years of his life withdrawn in his studio in Bratislava, working exclusively on a series of unusual portrait busts. Each sculpture represents one of the 64 emotions humans are said to feel. Messerschmidt himself serves as model. No one knows exactly why the artist created these heads. It was never his intention to exhibit or sell them. For years, they were on display at the Prater – at the Vienna fair.

How does the suffering of mental patients feel from within? With a great imagination, the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya creates an unsettling, dark world where all is on its head. Everything floats and is on shaky ground. For Goya, is the source of these phantoms to be found within a person, or does it reside elsewhere – in society as a whole?

From 1780 onwards it became fashionable to wear not only a pocket watch, but also a piece of jewellery in the form of a fake watch, a fausse montre. These often took the form of photographic memento mori, a tiny portrait medallion. Time does not stand still for anyone. In this period people were obsessed with death, with the transience of life.

Fiona Tan writes: 'To me, 'madness' often seems like a mask; it can serve as a way to hide oneself, in an attempt to escape profound psychological pain or unbearable fear. But there is also intense loneliness in this.' The artist has chosen a number of beautiful Japanese and Javanese masks for this exhibition. For Tan, these masks have a powerful, almost magical aura.

In Greek mythology, Psyche, from which the word psychology is derived, is the goddess of the soul. She is a princess of unparalleled beauty, who eventually marries Eros (Cupid). Traditionally, she is depicted with butterfly wings on her back: ‘Psyche’ is ancient Greek for both ‘soul’ and ‘butterfly’.

These men, women and children from all over Europe were arrested at the Paris World Exhibition of 1889 and subsequently documented in a unique album of photographs – early mugshots. In Pickpockets, Fioa Tan shows documentary images in combination with fictional life stories – a look into the past and a contemporary response.

Projected across three large screens, Janine's Room shows a room piled high with books. A woman lives and works here quietly, alone. But the longer you look and listen, the more a disturbing, parallel reality seems to emerge. Tan drew inspiration for this new work from author W.G. Sebald. He wrote in The Rings of Saturn: 'In a grain of sand in the hem of Emma Bovary's winter gown, said Janine, Flaubert saw the whole of the Sahara. For him, every speck of dust weighed as heavy as the Atlas mountains.'

For centuries, artists have used manuals to depict facial expressions and emotions. In addition to artists, scientists also attempted to map and interpret all human emotions. Charles Darwin himself conducted experiments for this but could find little consensus.

But Emotions remain difficult to read and to universally recognize. The story of our attempts to fathom the human mind is never finished.