Mengyuan Chen is the founder and director of A Perch for the Thornbirds (刺鸟栖息地), a mental health initiative. Trained in social work at both the undergraduate and the master’s levels, she has been engaged in grassroots mental health activism across China since 2015, working through community spaces, arts-based projects, and participatory approaches. Her research interests include political depression, mad studies, and art-based approaches to healing.
This essay examines the rise and fall of Pity Party, a series of grassroots mental health art exhibitions that sought to challenge the individualisation and medicalisation of depression while creating dialogical, community-based spaces for healing. By tracing the exhibition practices across different stages between 2017 and 2025, the article highlights the political possibilities created by […]
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