Discovering Women In Motion’s long-standing support for Laia Abril

With an ambition to spotlight women in the arts and culture, Kering’s program is reaffirming its support for the photographer, Laia Abril.

In 2016, On Abortion, the first instalment of A History of Misogyny, won the Prix de la Photo Madame Figaro - Arles, which is partnered by Women In Motion.

2023 saw Laia Abril feature at the Elles x Paris Photo exhibition, as curated by Fiona Rogers and backed by Kering during the Paris Photo international photography fair.

This year, Kering is extending its commitment to the works of Laia Abril in Paris, where she continues her research into the systemic control of women’s bodies across time and cultures by presenting a third chapter titled On Mass Hysteria.
 

Introducing On Mass Hysteria at LE BAL, with support from Women In Motion 

On Mass Hysteria sees Laia Abril examine what is generally mislabeled as “collective hysteria,” offering a visual interpretation of the explanations used to describe this particular phenomenon. This January, Women In Motion will lend its support to Abril’s exhibition at LE BAL – an independently run venue for the document-image – as well as involving the Kering Foundation on a lecture series held at the dedicated space.

Abril’s installation focuses on this phenomenon observed within tight-knit communities, predominantly affecting adolescent girls and women under extraordinary stress or grappling with oppression. Such groups develop collective symptoms for no obvious physiological reason, ranging from fainting, twitching, uncontrollable laughter and trance-like states.

Laia Abril investigates three specific case studies, and true to her method, she draws on the expertise of anthropologists, sociologists, neurologists and psychiatrists in an effort to retrace the root cause of these outbreaks. Each study shows Abril giving voice to women affected by the symptoms, sharing images of their experiences and stories while revisiting documents of the time.

Expansive archiving demonstrates the phenomenon’s sheer scale, both from a temporal and geographic perspective. At the same time, a cross-disciplinary approach – serving to intertwine anthropology, psychology, the history of medicine, and women's rights law – helps Laia Abril paint a fresh picture of mass psychogenic illness (MPI). The latter is regarded as a female proto-language of protest, triggered by systemic oppression, collective pain and transgenerational trauma.