Agenda

In 2021, the museum of the Institut du monde arabe received a generous donation: a set of archives, painted ceramics, and numerous gouache-drawn plates, executed at the end of the 1960s during social therapy workshops conducted at the Blida-Joinville psychiatric hospital. (HPB), Algerian institution marked by the emblematic figure of Frantz Fanon.
Here is this donation highlighted in its historical context.
The Blida-Joinville psychiatric hospital (HPB) was founded in 1933. Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), doctor in psychiatry and a major figure of anti-colonialism, officiated as chief physician between 1953 and 1956; the hospital will be named after the country’s independence. In rupture with colonial psychiatry, Fanon renews the psychiatric approach by adapting to the local cultural and social context of the residents. It creates with the latter and the medical team a social fabric within the institution, including manual activities, music therapy and sports practice, in order to promote patient expression with a view to their possible healing and reintegration into society.
In the late 1960s, Fanon’s successors developed this practice of social therapy. Witness the drawing workshops that give rise to this very rich collection of gouache paintings. Drawing becomes a real medium of expression for patients.
The exhibition questions the content of these paintings by highlighting the human dimension of the residents who made them; and, based on the archives of the donation, highlights the historical context in which the contributions of artistic workshops at the hospital are inscribed.
I RESERVE