Goya's Maja, Rubens' Venus and Baldung Grieng's Eve. Would they have gone down in history in the same way that they have if they had a mastectomy? This is what the Thyssen de Madrid raised this Wednesday on the occasion of the day against breast cancer, which is celebrated on October 19.
The museum has participated in the Art and Health initiative, with which the Fundación Cultura en Vena has proposed to bring the health debate closer to the cultural sphere and normalize the process of this disease that is diagnosed in 35,000 women each year.
Digitally transformed by the photographer Jorge Salgado, the exhibition, -which can be visited until October 26- includes three life-size representations of La Maja Naked, Venus and Cupid and Adam and Eve. The three protagonists proudly show off their mastectomy breasts, just like the only male character, because we must not forget that, although in a much lower percentage, the disease can also attack men.
"It focuses a lot on mastectomy and this has a very powerful effect because museums and cultural centers operate as devices for legitimizing visual culture, and it is very important to reflect on what we see and what we don't see", commented the historian of art Ana Folguera, author of the texts that accompany the canvases.
The result is a story that has been constructed by connecting these bodies "with the experience of a disease process, which is part of life", and in which the removed breasts are presented "not as an absence, but as a new presence : a new body is born, and therefore a new subjectivity is born".
With this project, he will try to change our perception of the processes linked to the disease with the potential that the arts have "to help in the treatment". "The health sector has an obligation to count on the cultural sector as an ally" because, he recalled, "art seriously benefits health".
