Still Sane Exhibit

By Tracey Mitchell and Megan Davies

The art show Still Sane hit the Vancouver art scene in the fall of 1984. It told the story of Sheila Gilhooly’s entrapment within the beast that psychiatry was in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when sexism was rife in the profession and homosexuality was still a category in the DSM (Diagnostics and Statistical Manual). Twenty-seven female figures with anguished faces, inscribed with Sheila’s stories of incarceration, greeted visitors to the Women in Focus Gallery. Just twelve months later the book Still Sane rolled off the presses of the local feminist publisher Press Gang, bringing the show’s compelling mix of feminist, lesbian and mad politics to a much wider audience.