Resounding Remnants
The Hunterdon Art Museum (HAM) will present Resounding Remnants, a visual arts exhibition by interdisciplinary artist Chanika Svetvilas, from September 21, 2025 – January 11, 2026. Working across various media, including drawings, video, sculpture, and mixed media, the exhibition incorporates interactive elements to create accessible art experiences that represent the lived experiences of specific communities. Resounding Remnants celebrates disability, mad pride, intersectional identity, and the importance of accessibility, community care, and interdependence. Humor and whimsy are used to resist the alienation of clinical treatment and disparities in healthcare access.
As Svetvilas explains, “Remnants-what I have salvaged from my lived mental health experience resound and reverberate in my art practice as memories…I have reconfigured the residue of my bipolar experiences into drawings, sculptures, installations, videos, and performative actions. My material choices are enveloped in the psychiatric trauma of hospitalizations such as charcoal as a transformative material that in activated form absorbs chemicals from drug overdose[s] to prescription bottles as a reflection of medical cocktails and side effects, to an archive of medical texts, pamphlets, workbooks, and finally the DSM (Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders).” Resounding Remnants aims to raise awareness and challenge perceptions surrounding mental health, using art as a platform for advocacy, reflection, and community engagement.