Jaishon Montgomery

BA Photography

ARTIST STATEMENT: ‘Depersonalized’ is a multimedia short film that interweaves the topic of mental health into a very loose narrative offset by factual information and data. This short film combines various soundscapes, interviews from George Mason students, and news reports to create an experience that can be observed in passing or viewed in full.  

I created this as both a passion project and an urgent message to people about the epidemic of declining mental health among students. The storytelling relies less on dialogue and more on visual metaphor. I added music and effects to simulate the distortion of reality which can come from certain facets of mental illness. The body horror genre involves the graphic destruction of the human body. Using body horror as a base for the allegorical representation, I focus on the overall uneasiness, madness, and unpredictability of mental illness struggles.  I was also inspired by the Capitol's Hirshhorn museum and their various video works, both appealing to ideas of the abstract and the emotionally driven. 

‘Depersonalized’ is an abstract, gruesome, and candid look at mental health that raises awareness, concern, and fear that the overall issue is larger than we may have thought.