In collaboration with psychoanalyst and cultural theorist Leon Tan, Virlani Hallberg’s Receding Triangular Square explores traditional Chinese and Taiwanese modalities of psychological healing as alternatives to dominant Western psychiatric and therapeutic practices. By juxtaposing the differing modalities, Hallberg and Tan make connections between psychological practices and histories of colonization and de-colonization. They challenge Western scientific standards of universality, rationality, and truth. Scenes from the video also highlight the ways in which mental despair and illness result from the trauma, displacement, and alienation caused by the colonization’s destruction of traditional cultures.
