Collaboration

Shared Consciousness Project is a search for human connection through art.

Val Resh is an artist with schizophrenia and a brain tumour. She shares her inspiration for the Shared Consciousness Project.

“My search began with this question: How can I unite the world with the colours that have helped me this far?

This search began in September 2019 when I found out that my brain tumour had returned. Just the thought of it affected me drastically & made me revisit everything I have been doing “How do I connect people through their differences and discrimination”. Having battled schizophrenia and multiple other conditions, the stigma I continue facing with my family because of schizophrenia, alongside the invisible effects of a brain tumour, made me relook my narrative and work in mental health as an activist.

As schools shut following the COVID – 19 pandemic, I lost my only source of hope which came from the interactions I had with my students. Waking up each day to be with them was something I looked forward to irrespective of having seizures, losing memory and temporary loss of days and function. The opportunity to connect with other humans surfaced in May 2020 when I asked individuals to share their thoughts with me, and I began painting them. It gave me hope while I saw how it uplifted others who couldn’t paint or express themselves creatively.

This was how Shared Consciousness came into being. A voice in my head told me, “If you are going to create art, it should be to awaken others and a tool for bringing people together – not a revolution, not a reaction, nor a fight”.

I will paint a collection of human experiences on 1512 canvas rolls over the next three years. The scale of these paintings combined will be exceeding the largest cricket field size in the world. I wish to display the collection across multiple grounds, and stadiums throughout the country, hopefully, the Motera Stadium in Gujarat for the final 1512 rolls. Each roll is currently displayed on the walls/grounds of my studio space in Pune. Once the first 500 are completed and verified end of 2021, they will enter the INDIA BOOK OF RECORDS for ‘The Largest Painting single-handedly painted by an artist with schizophrenia’. Sale proceeds of the paintings will be donated to organizations working towards children with disability, mental illness, intellectual & neuro-diverse groups.

These proceeds will also be donated towards students who have dropped out from schools to support their families during the lockdown period financially and hopefully enable the students to return to school.” You can learn more about the project at https://www.vajristudios.art/sharedconsciousness

As part of this program, Resh will use the stories shared on humansof2020 as inspiration to create artworks. We’re grateful for this beautiful collaboration and look forward to the stories coming to life.

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