Open in Emergency: Asian American Mental Health
Asian American Literary Review: Open in Emergency — Asian American Mental Health
It's a delight to be part of the January 2017 issue of the Asian American Literary Review, which is bold in its re-imagining of medical texts, brochures, and tarot cards, all entirely dedicated to the subject of Asian American mental health.
I designed six photo illustrations for the tarot card set based on what I learned about each writer who created the accompanying texts. Some sent images and personal documents, others had interesting anecdotes. All in all, those details helped me to create digital collages that capture the archetypes of the Adoptee, Survivor, Ancestor, Lecher, Patient, and Deportee for the card designs.
Art by Monica Ong, text by Matthew Salesses
From AALR: "Novel in form and approach, Open in Emergency: A Special Issue on Asian American Mental Health rethinks Asian American un/wellness with particular attention to:
adopting a broader vocabulary of vulnerability and woundedness;
locating un/wellness in the context of social structures and systems of violence;
reconsidering existing, predominantly medicalized, understandings of mental health as fundamentally part of the crisis; and
centering alternate understandings of un/wellness emerging from Asian American communities."
