Mental Superpowers
Stichting Beautiful Distress
Lady GaGa, Diane Arbus, Vincent van Gogh, Kurt Cobain – the list of geniuses with mental health issues is long and well known. But how do the two relate to one another? Or, to rephrase the question, can a mental illness also be seen as a superpower? To answer this question Jan Hoek spent three months living in a psychiatric hospital in the residency of Beautiful Distress in Kings County Hospital, Brooklyn, collaborating with the hospital’s clients and other unique individuals he met in New York. This comic book, Mental Superpowers, is the result.