Hospício É Deus: Eternidade 8 by Timothy Ernest Johnson

Hospício É Deus: Eternidade 8 (eight-channel fixed media, 2011)

This work is from a series of works inspired by the writing of Brazilian author Maura Lopes Cançado, specifically her book Hospício É Deus (Diário I). The title of this book translates to “The Asylum is God.” It relates her experiences while interned at the Gustavo Riedel psychiatric hospital in Rio de Janeiro in the years 1959 to 1960. The concept of eternity occurs as a recurring theme. Cançado writes “It is only in front of the insane that I have experienced the sensation of eternity” and “what haunts me about the insane is the distance—the insane appear eternal...eternity is insanity.”