Tenter l’art pour soigner - À l’hôpital psychiatrique de Blida-Joinville dans les années 1960

In 2021, the museum of the Institut du monde arabe received a generous donation: a collection of archives, painted ceramics, and numerous gouache drawing plates, produced in the late 1960s during social therapy workshops held at the Blida-Joinville psychiatric hospital (HPB), an Algerian institution marked by the emblematic figure of Frantz Fanon. Here is this donation showcased within its historical context.

The Blida-Joinville psychiatric hospital (HPB) was founded in 1933. Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), a doctor of psychiatry and major figure of anti-colonialism, worked there as head physician between 1953 and 1956; the hospital would bear his name upon the country's independence.

Breaking away from colonial psychiatry, Fanon renewed the psychiatric approach by adapting to the local cultural and social context of the residents.

Together with them and the medical team, he created a social fabric within the institution, including manual activities, music therapy, and sports, in order to encourage patients' self-expression with a view to their possible recovery and reintegration into society.

In the late 1960s, Fanon's successors developed this practice of social therapy. This is evidenced by the drawing workshops that gave rise to this very rich collection of gouache paintings. Drawing became a genuine medium of expression for the patients.

The exhibition examines the content of these paintings by highlighting the human dimension of the residents who created them; and, drawing upon the archives of the donation, it sheds light on the historical context in which the contributions of the artistic workshops at the hospital are framed.