Laia Abril, a visual reading of the phenomena of “collective hysteria”.
Until May 18, 2025, LE BAL presents On Mass Hysteria, the third part of Laia Abril‘s long-term work devoted to the history of misogyny. After On Abortion in 2016 and On Rape in 2020, this new chapter offers a visual reading of the different interpretations implemented to try to explain what has long been described as “collective hysteria”. These phenomena mainly strike close-knit communities of adolescent girls and women, confronted with situations of major stress or oppression which manifest collective symptoms devoid of physiological cause. fainting, trembling, inextinguishable giggles, trances…
Laia Abril, faithful to her research method, develops three specific case studies, examined with anthropologists, sociologists, neurologists and psychiatrists to try to understand the origin of these crises: paralysis in a Mexican boarding school (2007), fainting spells in factories in Cambodia (2012-2014) and tics wave in an American high school (2012). The artist has chosen to break with traditional linear narratives to reveal the repetition of patterns of social control exercised over women, and strives to recognize their pain, whatever the cause, and to pay tribute to their struggles without silencing them or making them invisible.
For each case, Laia Abril lets us hear the words of women suffering from these symptoms, and accompanies them with evocative images of their experiences, their story, through screen printing work suggesting psychological or animist interpretations of these events.She also revisits the reactions of the press and the authorities, using triptychs combining text and image, which evoke the media coverage of the events, while collages offer sociological and anthropological insight into each of the cases.
Laia Abril : On Mass Hysteria
Until May 18, 2025
LE BAL
6 impasse de la Défense, 75018 Paris
Wednesday 12 p.m.-8 p.m.; Thursday to Sunday 12 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Full €8 / Reduced €6
www.le-bal.fr
