States of Mind

Brussels-based English artist Ann Veronica Janssens has opened the Wellcome Collection’s States of Mind exhibition with a reverie in coloured mist and blended perceptions.

• A coloured, scentless, dry mist envelops the Wellcome Collection gallery
• The installation heralds a major cultural investigation into the experience of human consciousness

In Ann Veronica Janssens’ installation, the Wellcome Collection’s white cube space is suffused with mist shot through with yellow, pink and blue blended light. Janssens’ aim was to explore the relationships between colour, emotion and the subjectivity of experience. Designed to force visitors’ perception inwards, the space achieves a state of suspension that disorientates and disrupts one’s sense of depth. 

‘Nothing is more beautiful than a person’s own perception. I try to push it to its limits,’ Janssens told Creative Review.

This opening installation precedes an exhibition that will run from February to October 2016 entitled States of Mind: Tracing the Edges of Consciousness, which combines the perspective of artists, neuroscientists, philosophers and psychologists to explore what can happen when conscious experience is interrupted, damaged or undermined. yellowbluepink runs from 15 October 2015 to 3 January 2016.