Eva Kot'átková's ERROR exhibition explores mental illness and creativity through Bohnice Psychiatric Hospital artifacts

Eva Kot'átková's exhibition ERROR at ISCP in Brooklyn, NY from 2 February to 19 April 2016 examines connections between mental illness and creative expression through works inspired by patients at Prague's Bohnice Psychiatric Hospital. The show includes 25 collages titled Error (2015–16) created from Czech educational and psychological books, depicting children bound and contained. An installation called Error (Body of Viktor, 'the electrician') (2016) features cages for body segments honoring Viktor, a 1920s Bohnice patient who believed his body parts detached during thunderstorms. A fictional diary accompanies this installation with Viktor's writings about finding tranquility through creative expression. The hour-long video The Judicial Trial of Jakob Mohr (2015) recreates a 1919 drawing by another Bohnice patient, Jakob Mohr, who believed he was controlled by electromagnetic waves from an empty box. The video features testimony from Mohr's family, therapist, and art brut visions including 'The Mechanical Boy' (representing Robert Gie) and 'Darger's Girls' (representing Henry Darger), both institutionalized artists. Kot'átková, born in Prague in 1982, draws parallels between the suppression of children in Communist schools and the treatment of mental patients at Bohnice, founded in 1909. The exhibition questions whether mental disturbances enable creative genius that should flourish rather than be controlled through institutional routines, therapy, and medication.