Arthur Bispo do Rosário. Manto da Apresentação [Presentation Mantel] undated. Fabric, thread, paper and metal, 118,5 x 141,2 cm

Museu Bispo do Rosário: Care as a Way

Raquel Fernandes

In these turbulent times, where politics and economics have left an almost infinitesimal space for culture amidst the priorities of urban life, thinking about the role of museums and their relevance to social transformation has become a key issue for museological institutions.

The Bispo do Rosário Museum of Contemporary Art (mBrac) has as one of its key missions the deconstruction of the stigma that persists in the social imaginary about the former mental health asylum and surroundings known as Colônia Juliano Moreira [Juliano Moreira Colony] and the very notion of madness.

A Short History

Old photo of the Colônia Juliano Moreira. Archive IMAS Juliano Moreira

Created in 1924, the Colony of Alienated Men, as it was originally called and pioneered by the progressive physician Juliano Moreira, who always sought to humanize the way the mentally ill were treated, was a very advanced and innovative project at the time, pointing to the problems of modern life and increasing urbanization, as factors triggering psychic suffering.

Inspired by the experience of the village of Geel in Belgium, Moreira proposed a new model where patients were removed from sickening city environments and taken to a less demanding locale where they could carry out simple activities in an agricultural environment – a form of treatment known as praxitherapy.¹ Removed from an often, unhealthy family context, they came to be supported by a model of heterogeneous family assistance. This operated through the integration of patients and Colônia employees who would act as an auxiliary family in a domestic living arrangement between normal and healthy people.

 

But despite the good intentions, these ideals proved unsustainable and the Colônia began to receive an increasing amount of interns.² It rapidly passed from agricultural colony to hospital-colony, following the institutional model implemented in the 1940s, which in practice turned it into an end-of-line deposit for the insane and maladjusted of all types, those who did not adapt to social norms. At the height of its occupation, the Colônia had more than five thousand patients, a true hospital city.

To add to this scenario of isolation, the hospital territory came to also include the leper colony of Curupaiti and the tuberculosis sanatorium in Curicica, reinforcing the stigma surrounding the neighborhood of Jacarepaguá that housed these various colonies that became known as the “Sertão Carioca”. [T.N. Sertão means a desert wilderness area and also refers to a large semi-arid territory in Brazil’s Northeast. The term here suggests connotations of backwardness and desolateness. Carioca is the moniker for people from Rio de Janeiro]. This sanitary environment was present in the popular imagination, in the way the city was understood and perceived, reproduced in verses in the famous Fox “Neurastênico” of 1954, by Nazereno de Brito in collaboration with Betinho (Alberto Borges de Barros): “I need to treat myself, otherwise I’ll go to Jacarepaguá.”

The fear of being affected by some mental disorder and having to end up behind the walls of the Colônia was real, so the important thing was to stay as far away from it as possible, without societal questioning of asylums they were presented as the only alternative treatment. Even doctors and staff themselves believed that they could do very little for these patients who were considered chronic cases, with any chance of returning to normalcy lost.

Questioning of asylums began to emerge in the early 1970s, gaining strength in the 1980s. In Brazil this coincided with the push for democracy and the decline of the military dictatorship (1964-1985). Beginning with the experiences of therapeutic communities, which, through listening to patients sought to humanize the asylum space, this questioning became increasingly radical from the end of the 1980s onwards. This was marked by the movement of mental health care workers who saw as ineffective any notion of improvement of the asylum model and sought to make claims for its abolition, establishing the motto: For a society without asylums.³ They advanced the creation of public policy known as Psychiatric Reform that proposed to change the assistant care paradigm in favor of distributed territorial services and support to replace the asylum model. It was within this context of openness that we might go back in time and think about the artist/mental health patient Arthur Bispo do Rosário.

Arthur Bispo do Rosário: Resignifying the Everyday

Black, northeastern, schizophrenic, Arthur Bispo do Rosário (Japaratuba, SE, 1909 – Rio de Janeiro, 1989) lived over 50 years hospitalized in psychiatric institutions. He made his work principally here, in the Colônia asylum, work that is now recognized nationally and internationally as one of the most important artistic productions in the field of Brazilian visual arts.

Arthur Bispo do Rosário. Untitled, 1943. Silver emulsion prints, 70 x 70 cm. Photos: Jean Manzon (Paris, 1915 – São Paulo, 1990). Cortesia Galeria Fass.

Through his poetics, with his ability to use the various objects of his daily life loaded with the weight of the de-personalized mass institution, Bispo subverted the asylum structure. So, for example, in unraveling uniforms, intended for patients, to use as the thread to overlay his objects and weave his banners, he rebuilt the world, with the mission to present it on the day of the Last Judgment.

His ceaseless production re-signifying everyday objects could only be understood as something different from the residue of madness by the eye of a stranger, the eye of an artist. His work up until then had had no visibility. It had been understood via other codes, which saw it as something exotic, devoid of utility or meaning. And it was only through new codes that his creation could ascend to the status of art. When his work was discovered by the art world, almost at the end of his life, the body of his work was already complete; it was already a collection.

Bispo had a unique way of reading the world. As a great cataloger of the universe, everything was captured by his eye and re-signified. As the museum responsible for the diffusion of his work, we have the challenge of maintaining in our actions the essence that permeates the work of Bispo: to provoke through his work new re-significations, whether they refer to art, subjectivity, territory, religiosity, questions of gender, citizenship, in short, everything that can be broached via the universe of Bispo.

New Care Practices

Maria Mattos. A dama e o barco [The Woman and the Boat], performance on the occasion of the exhibition Play curated by Marta Mestre and Fernanda Pequeno, 2013.

Today, despite all the advances in pharmacology and new care practices that focus on social reintegration, the fear of madness is still present. Patients are still objectified, transformed into incomprehensible things to be feared and rejected. We have a lot of difficulty getting close to madness, which, even with its uncommon nature of coherence, is nevertheless a constituent of human experience.

Through art and culture, the mBrac wants to contribute to the reduction of stigma about madness. Being inserted in what was once a mental asylum allows us to approach this context in different ways and expand the museum’s field of action and its relevance.

Willyams Martins. Peles da Colônia Juliano Moreira [Skins of Colônia Juliano Moreira]. Voile and applied resin onto the wall surface, various installations, 2015. Photo: Wilton Montenegro

Drawing on Arthur Bispo do Rosário’s collection, the museum’s work is understood as something that goes beyond the galleries and includes not only the presentation of installations of the asylum’s past, but also new “caring” relations that have been established in the territory of the Colônia facilitating interactions between art, madness, and health.

The proximity of art and mental health is not something new. It has been present in asylums since the middle of the last century in art therapy workshops, deployed for various purposes. With the advent of psychiatric reform in the 1980s, artists have been called upon to assist in the transformation of the asylum, in the deconstruction of the negative image of madness. It was necessary to point to the failure of the asylum as a place of recovery and treatment and to open spaces in society for living with madness. Artistic and cultural interventions have thus served as a means of denunciation of the horrors produced by the isolation and confinement of the mentally ill. They have also helped to reestablish a dialogue between culture and knowledge of the psyche as part of the construction of new therapeutic strategies.

Today, the challenge is to think about the role of the museum within the particular territory in which it is situated in order to integrate its cultural and educational vocation in concert with the precepts of Brazilian Psychiatric Reform. This role also constitutes itself as an apparatus of clinical practice, which does not necessarily imply the remission of symptoms, but rather the promotion of creative life processes based on a relationship between art and care.

The museum proposes to be this place of encounter, experimentation, and tension, from welcoming differences to the production of new (re)significations. In this sense, how can this experience of acting in this territory produce practices that point in the direction of the construction of a “care as method”? And what might this be?

If we draw on the etymology of words, method has its origin from the Greek term methodos – referring to the path or way. Indeed, the word care comes from the Latin cogitare, “to think”, “to conceive”, “to prepare”, that splits into co + agitare – meaning an insistence on acting. The word care also has roots in the Latin word curare – meanings that can be paralleled with the idea of “to deal with;” “to initiate care in/with/for/of.”

Are we talking then about a model of thought, of a care that models itself as a way, as a path? If so what kind of care would we be talking about?

As researcher Mária Ballarin puts it, thinking about care and health care is not a single idea of care, but rather a set of notions informed by different perspectives including ethical-philosophical, technical-instrumental, and political among others, that approach care as an integral action, which is part of the essence of human existence, understanding health as a right of life and not only as a technical procedure.⁴

But what, in fact, defines care in the health field, particularly in the field of mental health? With the advent of Psychiatric Reform, the assistance model ceased to have the center of its action concentrated in isolated asylum hospitals, to direct its practices toward action in an expanded territory, seeking an integration of practices and knowledge making possible the constitution of interdisciplinary psychosocial technologies. These new proposals for conducting clinical work problematize care relationships, where both the roles of the caregiver and the one to be cared for are equally questioned. We could draw on the ontology of Heidegger to describe the position of the one who cares (for), as either an authentic or inauthentic care, depending on whether he/she assumes an active stance that allows the recognition of the other in his/her freedom, dignity and uniqueness, or whether a totalizing care posture is assumed. In the later the caregiver does everything for the other, without betting on the possible autonomy of the one receiving care, a practice that rather might help them the “cared for” find their true sense of being.⁵

This choice, method, path, and mode of care are decisive insofar as their implications may lead to the construction of the autonomy of the subject of care or their custody.

Eleonora Fabião and collaborators. azul azul azul e azul, 2016.
Photograph of performative action. Variable dimensions. Assistant: Mariah Valeiras. Collaborators: André Lepecki, André Telles, Adriana Schneider, Dieymes Pechincha, Dominique Arantes, Elisa Peixoto, Elilson Nascimento, Gabriel Martins, Gunnar Borges, Luar Maria, Lucas Canavarro, Miro Spinelli, Rubia Rodrigues, Thiago Florêncio & Viniciús Arneiro. Photography: Jair Denozor

Inserted in this context the museum has evolved its practices, acting in micropolitical spaces as a means of promoting encounters that allow for creativity, exchange and sharing. A vital aspect of this is the work of the Polo Experimental, a cultural, community and education center for mental health users administered by the museum that aims to stimulate, expand and solidify socio- affective and cultural networks in the Colônia and beyond. Promoting encounters between mental health users and the community as well as diverse social and creative agents, the Polo is housed in an old remodeled and transformed asylum pavilion and includes various programs such as the activities of the Escola Livre das Artes ELA [Free School of Arts], Casa B [Home/house B] Artist Residency Program, the income generation programs Arte, Horte Cia [Art, Garden, Company] and the leisure initiative Pedra Branca [White Stone].

The Polo also features Ateliê Gaia, a collective studio comprising of artist residents that were former inmates of the Colônia asylum that now have their autonomy guaranteed thanks to the psychiatric reform initiatives. The studio promotes dialogue between the user/artists and the surrounding territory and diverse art communities where different forms of technical and artistic training are supported as well as their engagement in the art market. As a key initiative of the museum, the Polo allows for an exchange between projects and strategic actions of education, social reinsertion, and dialogue. Thus, programs such as ELA and artistic residencies especially over the last five years have been able to open channels that have made it possible to build links with the different audiences that make up our territory and beyond. Through proposing spaces for co-creation and collaboration and integrating artists, students, residents of the territory, users and workers of mental health services, it has been possible to experience and share new forms of belonging and being in the world. For some examples of the diversity of this performance see the text on Casa B as part of this case study and the essays of 4 artists who have engaged in residencies and/or site specific projects (Daniel Murgel, Eleonora Fabião, Fernanda Magalhães and Lívia Flores), and also part 2 of the video Care as Method in this issue.

Through the encounter between art and health, the museum hopes, in opting for the path of the autonomy of subjects, not to retreat before these enigmatic beings, as the psychiatrist Dr. Nise da Silveira described people affected by psychosis. We aim to advance the construction of practices that enable the expansion of how we manage clinical situations. In so doing we can promote fissures in the social order, here enacted as part of the struggle that breaks the stigma that still surrounds the question of madness, and thus moves towards a society that is more open to dealing with difference.

 

Additional References:
Araújo, João Henrique Queiroz de. “Entre Preservar e Reformar: Práticas e Saberes Psis no Museu da Colônia Juliano Moreira.” Masters in Social Psychology, Instituto de Psicologia, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, 2016.
Perissé, Gabriel. “Palavras e origens Considerações etimológicas.” Available em:http://palavraseorigens.blogspot.com.br/2011/02/quem-cuida-vive-pensando.html [Accessed November 2018]

 

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Raquel Fernandes
Raquel is a director of the Bispo do Rosário Museum Contemporary Art. She holds a degree in cinema from the Estácio de Sá University (2007) and a PhD from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (1991). She has an MBA in Museum Management from Cândido Mendes University (2016) and specialization in psychoanalysis, from Universidade Santa Úrsula (2000).

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¹ Ana Venâncio, “A Colônia Juliano Moreira na década de 1940: política assistencial, exclusão e vida sócial.” Available: http://www.psicopatologiafundamental.org.br/uploads/files/iii_congresso/mesas_redondas/a_colonia_juliano_moreira_na_decada_de_1940.pdf [Accessed November 2018]

² Idem.

³ Fernando Tenório, “A reforma psiquiátrica brasileira, da década de 1980 aos dias atuais: história e conceitos,” in: História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos, vol.9, 2002, 25-59.

⁴ Maria Luisa Gazabim Simões Ballarin, “Os diferentes sentidos do cuidado: considerações sobre a atenção em saúde mental,” O Mundo da Saúde (São Paulo: 2010) 34(4):444-450 Available: observasmjc.uff.br/psm/uploads/SntidosdocuidadoemSaudeMental.pdf [Accessed November 2018]

⁵ Martin Heidegger, Ser e Tempo, (Petrópolis: Vozes; 1997).

⁶ Nise da Silveira, Imagens do Inconsciente (Petrópolis. Rio de Janeiro: Vozes, 2015) 85.