Tenter l’art pour soigner - À l’hôpital psychiatrique de Blida-Joinville dans les années 1960
Published by Sophie P
- From wednesday, october 22, 2025 to sunday, january 3, 2027
- 10:00 AM-7:00 PM
- Institut du Monde Arabe 1 Rue des Fossés Saint-Bernard, 75005 Paris, France
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At the Institut du monde arabe, Tenter l’art pour soigner (Exploring Art as a Means of Care) presents gouache paintings, ceramics and archival materials from workshops at an Algerian psychiatric hospital. The works were made by patients at Blida-Joinville in the late 1960s. The exhibition displays their drawings and explores the circumstances that enabled them to paint within the institution.
The archives place these workshops within a history that began several years earlier. As chief physician at Blida between 1953 and 1956, Frantz Fanon sought to break with the practices of colonial psychiatry. Working with staff and patients, he introduced group activities and adapted them to the patients’ social and cultural context. His successors continued this approach. The drawing workshops that produced the gouache paintings gave tangible form to this work.
Some works bear a signature and a date, such as a gouache by Moussaoui S. from October 1968. Others are anonymous. Shown alongside the hospital records, they bring attention back to the people who made them. The exhibition reveals the possibilities for expression that drawing offered, giving the works room to convey something that medical records alone cannot capture.
Practical information
- Museum, level 5; entrance via level 7.
- Tuesday to Friday, 10am–6pm; weekends and public holidays, 10am–7pm. Closed on Mondays.
- Free admission for under-26s.
Promoter
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Sophie P@institutdumondearabe
Venue
Institut du Monde Arabe
1 Rue des Fossés Saint-Bernard, 75005 Paris, France