The fight against the stigma of mental illness is one of the challenges of today's society and art can be a strong ally to take another step on the path to good mental health. At least that's what they believe from the Cultura en Vena association and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, a center that has given up its lobby to exhibit the Art and Mental Health exhibition with three "digitally intervened" life-size reproductions of iconic works by Rubens, Rembrandt and Domenico Ghirlandaio, on the occasion of the commemoration on October 10 of World Mental Health Day.
At the inauguration of this exhibition, which will be on display until October 22, the psychiatrist and hospital care manager in the Madrid Health Service, Mercedes Navío, insisted that "there is no health without mental health", while highlighting that " "One in four people will have a mental health problem or be affected by one."
For this reason, he has insisted on continuing to work to "completely dilute the stigma that accompanies mental health" and has opted for art as a "dynamiting" element of the taboo and prejudice against these disorders.
With art "we can feel identified and participate in it...and we build a world in which no one feels like they are outside, people save people," the psychiatrist highlighted.
As explained by Ana Folguera, art historian and cultural mediator of the exhibition, the choice of The Three Graces is due to the fact that it speaks a lot about the canons of Western beauty and the pressure exerted on the female body.
The work has been intervened to show the central figure with an eating disorder, with anorexia, and the "idea of contact and hugs with other women, as well as the collective as an important way to alleviate the effects of disorders, has been taken advantage of." of this type," he explained.
Rembrandt's Self-Portrait has been reproduced six times representing serious disorders such as sadness, elation or isolation, Folguera detailed, explaining that it has been used to talk about a set of symptoms without judging them.
In his case, the work of Ghirlandao has been intervened to show the depressive disorder, the unchosen loneliness, which Folguera has called the pandemic of the 21st century.
"A bottle of pills has been included in the iconography of the work, because this disorder requires medical treatment, but there is also a paintbrush, because we firmly believe that culture and art heal. That paintbrush opens the door to treatment through own creativity," said the art historian.
In addition to this exhibition, on October 10 the Museum will hold a day with experts in which they will talk about eating disorders (ED), various mental pathologies, childhood mental problems, unwanted loneliness, depression and suicide.
