Comment about Mike Parr’s Sunset Claws, 2023: a dialogic exchange with reframing through psychological construct Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria.
In December 2023 The Guardian reported that Anna Schwartz dropped the artist Mike Parr after a 36 year relationship with her gallery because of a process conceptual piece Sunset Claws. The process involved text, automatic writing and red paint: symbolism and literal transferred to a gallery wall. Blood red paint, and black charred text indicating issues that aren’t grey (cerebral matter) nor black and white. The flesh experiences war and trauma. The Gaza area is known for a high anti-depressant culture being one of the highest prescribed areas in the world to date (numbers per capita). A grey area indicates a lack of finger pointing and a suggestion simply to stop and reframe, rethink and organise populations experiencing trauma, unemployment, poverty and migration as well as trauma from the sound and sights of constant artillery bombardment.
Schwartz’s decision suggests a moment or professional experience indicating Rejection sensitive dysphoria. This condition – I am not diagnosing Schwartz, simply reframing the response that is similar in a lot of workplaces and not simply the art world or in discussions involving Israel and Palestine – is characterises ADHD and reveals that the brain “can’t regulate rejection-related emotions and behaviours” and the person and the receiver experiences heightened intensity related to the moment they don’t feel comfortable with (https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24099-rejection-sensitive-dysphoria-rsd). Briefly put, rejection sensitivity means a person can’t, through their brain or neurological make-up, manage their severe anxiety associated with rejection; has trouble seeing negative interactions as a process to develop conversations and reacts according to their neurology which is extreme intensity; overreacts to feelings of rejection – anger, rage, extreme sadness, and severe anxiety (https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24099-rejection-sensitive-dysphoria-rsd).
They feel pain and they feel discomfort and this means an experience filled with overwhelming anxiety and what others might experience as rage, aggression, and intense attempts to humiliate them once they have called out the wrong (in a workplace, for example). It is a psychosocial hazard and it is something people experience as overwhelming humiliation and shame and the desire to harm others instead of feeling that pain and emotionally regulate is difficult. People suffer not knowing how to respond.
I called Mike Parr’s performance painting a “process” and he has opened the possibility for conversation that extreme behaviours like rejecting his comment denies. The work is a process that offers a way to regulate emotions, or an outlet to speak, dance, paint, cry, laugh and hold out a hand for reconciliation not simply exclude, like the experience of apartheid. It has been documented that writing and re-writing supports processing trauma. The images of war traumatise people through the media and in lived experience. Rewriting is a process and the cerebral or brain stimulation necessary for enjoying life with others needs this care and kindness. The process and act of self care, not simply for counselling and processing vicarious trauma, is evident in Parr’s work.
© Cate Andrews, 2024.
Cate's Art and Film conversations 
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