The Blida-Joinville psychiatric hospital (HPB) was founded in 1933. Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), doctor of psychiatry and a major figure of anticolonialism, served there as chief physician between 1953 and 1956; the hospital would bear his name upon the country's independence. Breaking with colonial psychiatry, Fanon renewed the psychiatric approach by adapting it to the local cultural and social context of the residents. With these residents and the medical team, he built a social fabric within the institution, including manual activities, music therapy and sports practice, in order to encourage the patients' expression with a view to their possible recovery and their reintegration into society.
At the end of the 1960s, Fanon's successors developed this practice of social therapy. The drawing workshops that gave rise to this very rich body of gouache paintings bear witness to it. Drawing became a true medium of expression for the patients.
The exhibition examines the content of these paintings, highlighting the human dimension of the residents who made them; and, drawing on the archives of the donation, it sheds light on the historical context in which the contributions of the art workshops at the hospital are situated.