A parallel can be drawn between Westin’s spa installation and a state of inner personal hell. She cut her finger on a fake healing crystal, and now it brings her bad luck. The artist’s creative process becomes an exorcism of sorts; her anxieties are evil spirits rising in the steam, manifested as paintings on the walls of a cenobite suite optimized for self-cannibalistic pleasure. The cult of wellness is conceived literally as masochistic leisure time well spent in a state of zen mutilation.

 The installation, simultaneously horrific and blissful, plays with contradiction at every turn. Westin’s anti-spa becomes a wellness retreat in reverse. Bodies are disintegrated, not revitalized. Annihilation of the soul is the best way to treat the thoughts that eat away at your brain.

Text by: Euronymous Bosch