In the halls of Bethlem Hospital (the psychiatric hospital that gave its name to the word ‘bedlam’ meaning mayhem) and on the streets of the seaside town Great Yarmouth, the artist Dolly Sen invites passersby to sit on a mattress covered in stuffed toy lambs and talk about madness, what makes people mad, and how to navigate distress.
Dolly Sen has been a child alien in the Empire Strikes Back, written over ten books, screwed a lightbulb into the sky, sectioned the DWP, recited poetry in a tree, given a website a psychotic episode, tripadvisored a psychiatric hospital, visited California’s Death Row, dispensed an Apocalypse Loyalty Card, created a madvert calendar, worn a wandering womb with a clitoris hat to examine misogyny in medicine, turned fanny prints into a Rorschach test, given Alexa a mental state examination, created Bedlamb, shouted at Freud’s couch, made films about the lived experience of psychosis, galvanised people to Help the Normals, sold nothing on Ebay, subverted 100s of other things and in the process spanked normality’s bottom. She is working class, Queer, interested in disability and the madness given to us by the world. She wants to disrupt systems that produce that programming called oppression, not through trojan horse viruses but with my little ponies on acid with a little sadness in their hearts. She/They. She currently resides in Norwich in Norfolk.