Tenter l’art pour soigner, In 2021, the Museum of the Arab World Institute received a remarkable donation: a collection of archives, hand-painted ceramics, and numerous gouache drawings created in the late 1960s during social therapy workshops at the Blida-Joinville Psychiatric Hospital (HPB) in Algeria — an institution deeply associated with the influential psychiatrist and anti-colonial thinker Frantz Fanon.
This exhibition highlights that donation and situates it within its historical context.
Founded in 1933, the Blida-Joinville Psychiatric Hospital became a center of reform under Frantz Fanon (1925–1961), who served as chief physician from 1953 to 1956. Breaking away from colonial psychiatry, Fanon introduced a human-centered approach rooted in the patients’ cultural and social realities. Together with the medical staff, he fostered a community within the hospital — encouraging manual crafts, music therapy, and sports — to promote patients’ self-expression, recovery, and reintegration into society.
In the late 1960s, Fanon’s successors further expanded these social therapy practices. The drawing workshops from that period produced an extraordinary body of gouache paintings, where art became a genuine medium of expression for the patients.
The exhibition explores the meaning behind these works, revealing the human depth of their creators and, through the accompanying archives, shedding light on the historical and therapeutic significance of the artistic programs at the hospital.