This participatory program invites visitors to contribute collaboratively to a scroll collage of a sprawling landscape. In response to Modernist, Surrealist, and Dadaist appropriations of “madness,” participants will use a variety of materials to create scenes that reclaim “mad” identity from exploitation—recasting “madness” as a site of creation, critique, and refusal.

“Madness” refers to experiences and identities often pathologized as mental illness. “Mad culture” offers a different way of understanding the world: one that values altered states, nonlinear thinking, deep feeling, and visionary insight. To be “mad” is not just to suffer but to resist, to imagine otherwise, and to connect with others outside the limits of psychiatric logic. “Madness” invites new forms of meaning, relationship, and care.
What to Expect

This program will take place on the 3rd floor of the Modern Wing. For easiest access, guests should enter through the Modern Wing public entrance on Monroe Street. Both stairs and an elevator will be available nearby.

The program will include a guided collage-making experience. Facilitators will be on hand to help guests participate. Guests will have the opportunity to visit nearby galleries to find inspiration for their reflection and for their art making.

ASL interpretation and/or assisted listening devices are available upon request at museum_interpretation@artic.edu. Assisted-listening devices are limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. Requests must be made at least two weeks in advance.
about the artist

Matt Bodett received his MFA from Boise State University in 2011 and moved to Chicago in 2013, where he is a prominent advocate for disability and mad culture. In 2022, he founded the Center for Mad Culture, dedicated to exploring and amplifying the voices of those identifying with madness. Bodett currently teaches at Loyola University Chicago and serves on the board of the Good Hart Artist Residency.

A visual artist, poet, and performer, Bodett has had his work featured locally at venues including Steppenwolf Theatre, Victory Gardens Theater, the Poetry Foundation, and Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, as well as internationally at the Freud Museum in London, the No Limits Festival in Berlin, and other venues. His practice interrogates his lived experiences with madness, connecting Western art-historical ideals to contemporary understandings of madness as a viable identity. He is driven by a belief in the transformative power of art to challenge societal narratives, foster empathy, and create space for mad voices in cultural conversations.

About the Series

Cripping the Galleries is a collaborative series between the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Contemporart Art, Chicago (MCA); and Bodies of Work featuring local artists activating museums through the lens of crip* culture and access.

This summer, artist and director of the Center for Mad Culture, Matt Bodett, leads interactive workshops at both the MCA and the Art Institute.

* “Crip” as a noun is pejorative word that has been reclaimed by disabled people who embrace it as an outsider identity with an edge. “To crip” or “cripping” as a verb means to expose oppressive systems of normalcy and to imagine a world that is otherwise.

event partners

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is one of the world’s largest museums dedicated to contemporary art, where the public can experience the work and ideas of living artists and understand the historical, social, and cultural context of the art of our time.
Copy Of Bodies Of Work Logo Round

Bodies of Work is a consortium of four programs at three Chicago organizations that share a commitment to programming that is distinguished by its integration of disability artistry, academics, and activism:

Program on Disability Art, Culture, and Humanities and the Disability Cultural Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago
Disability Culture Activism Lab at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Art and Culture Project at Access Living

Along with partnering artists and organizations, Bodies of Work serves as a catalyst for the development of disability art and culture that illuminates the disability experience in new and unexpected ways.

Official Website

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Tags: Chicago, Cripping the Galleries, Cripping the Galleries: Tracing from the Margins, Loop, Matt Bodett, The Art Institute of Chicago