Art & Mind: Reflections of Women, Femmes and Our Mental Health During COVID

“Art & Mind” will showcase the creative works and stories of women/femme-identified people who live with various conditions, including anxiety, depression, and chronic pain. Participants will illustrate their life experiences through music, dance, talks, drama, and visual art and show how they navigated Covid-related anxiety, isolation, and life change.

This virtual event will feature Amaranthia Sepia, a mental health advocate, comic artist, illustrator, and character designer of African-American and Caribbean (Bajan) descent. Her mediums are focused on ink and digital art. She is also a budding art coordinator with a focus on minority inclusive, unconventional activist artworks. Sepia was previously a lead organizer/art coordinator and the lead on media outreach for the grassroots collective ARTivism Initiative, and was an artist and collaborator for LA mental health non-profit, The Painted Brain, for their disability art show, “Discovering a Place for Us.” Her advocacy includes using art to raise awareness about mental health/illness and Black health disparities.

Representation of Black people/Black women and women's experiences are crucial parts of her artwork and art coordination. As a Black woman with invisible illnesses, Sepia feels it's critical to use her voice and pen to create the representation of her and many others long to see. She's developing a mental health comic, "Emo Bunny," about a bunny girl whose anxiety is personified as a monster. Her series, "Surviving in Isolation: The Black Mental Health Experience," illustrates how Black people face discrimination in mental healthcare.

When Sepia faced racism due to bullying in American public school after returning from Japan, she found peace by making comics based upon fond memories of Tokyo. Bullying worsened her health, forcing her to enter online school. Soon after, Sepia developed an anti-bullying traveling solo art show titled "I'm Proud of Who I Am," occurring between ages 13-16. This began her activist work.