The Mind’s Eye: A LACMA Poster Project is intended to consider art’s intersection with the movement toward neurodiversity awareness and inclusion that is largely driven by a new generation via social media. In collaboration with WE RISE and in honor of Mental Health Awareness month, LACMA has commissioned a series of graphic works by five artists to be displayed on vinyl clings installed along the construction fence on Wilshire Boulevard. Art is one of the ways we imagine new futures for ourselves and this project is intended to center and celebrate different ways of thinking and being in the world. Scoli Acosta, Andy Alexander, The Revolution School, Favianna Rodriguez, and Kerry Tribe all use different aesthetic strategies—from figurative painting, to text-based conceptual works, to game structures—to evoke the vast range of cognitive and affective processing styles encompassed within human experience. 

Scoli Acosta, Horizons (Wilshire Blvd.), 2021, © Scoli Acosta, digital image courtesy of the artist

Scoli Acosta’s Horizons (Wilshire Blvd.) (2021) invokes the infinite multiplicity and possibility of the mind, allowing for individual imagination to be situated within a sense of the collective. 

Andy Alexander, Halfway, 2021, © Andy Alexander, digital image courtesy of the artist

Andy Alexander’s dynamic message in Halfway (2021) reminds us that making space for neurodiversity benefits everyone. 

The Revolution School, ND Time Bandits: Co-Adventures in Reshaping Time, 2021, © The Revolution School, digital image courtesy of the artists

The Revolution School foregrounds the unique relationship to time that neurodiversity can bring in their schematic poster-as-portal, ND Time Bandits: Co-Adventures in Reshaping Time (2021).

Favianna Rodriguez, We Are Interconnected, 2021, © Favianna Rodriguez, digital image courtesy of the artist

The three characters in Favianna Rodriguez’s We Are Interconnected (2021) represent the myriad ways that each individual’s mind works while uplifting BIPOC neurodiverse people.

Kerry Tribe, Question 6, 2021, © Kerry Tribe, digital image courtesy of the artist

Kerry Tribe’s Question 6 (2021) uses what she calls “the aesthetics of assessment” to highlight the fallability of systems that have been developed to apprehend the human mind.

After over a year of inconceivable suffering whose impact was felt disproportionately by the most vulnerable among us, LACMA seeks to be a place of community, solace, and inspiration. At this moment, as we collectively work to envision and shape a future that centers diversity, equity, and inclusion, we want to embrace the unique experience and imaginative potential of neurodiversity and celebrate its impact on art and creativity.