Mistress Pieces
Join us for a unique book 'opening'
Fingerprint Editions is delighted to announce the ‘opening’ of its publication Mistress Pieces by novelist Jen Hyatt. Taking the form of an art installation, Mistress Pieces will be part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival in Autumn 2025.
Framed within a queer love story, Hyatt’s work celebrates madness and its influence on contemporary political and personal relationships, encouraging us to embrace chaos as we seek a new paradigm for living.
In the work, Hyatt recounts how she survived a psychotic episode.
In every moment, words arrive — written on the flaps of cigarette packets, receipts from endless bottles of wine, walls of the house, along the curve of my thigh, in the corners of torn photographs — whatever comes to hand. They are my passion, my relentless lover, controlling space and time, demanding to be present. I call them my ‘mistress pieces’.
The installation will re-create the living space of an ordinary house rendered completely white — a blank space. Words and images from Mistress Pieces will sit in the ‘white house’ as an invitation for others to contribute their own ‘mistress pieces’.
As visitors enter the space, they may select from a wide range of artistic and everyday materials, magazines, etc., sharing their stories wherever the space draws them. A soundtrack inspired by Mistress Pieces will play in the background. A time-lapsed video will record how the house comes alive with visitors’ feelings — a Home for Madness.
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The installation recalls Hyatt’s earlier piece, which saw her taking over a row of condemned houses in Hackney, London. Residents of the estate were given markers, paints and spray cans to record on the outside walls the memories of the lives they’d lived within them.
Hyatt went on to create a digital mental health service — Big White Wall — now www.togetherall.com, which allowed people to freely express their feelings on ‘bricks’ and gain support from a facilitated peer community. This service has now supported many thousands of people through their lived experiences of mental health.
Further details of the event will be released in the coming months.