Organized by the Ibn Rochd University Psychiatric Center and the Art Therapy Unit, the “Beauty and Madness” exhibition is a vivid encounter between different worlds, all focused on mental health. It is held from June 23 to 26, 2022 at the MémoArts gallery.
The photographs of psychotherapist and art therapist Boushra Benyezza are screaming with truth, but also with poetry and questioning. They are hoisted on the walls of the MémoArts gallery as another proof of the existence of a part of our society, often reduced to silence and oblivion, indicates a press release.
This immersion, which is intended to be a continuation of the work started by the fourth edition of Ciné Psy Maroc, has the main objective of lifting the taboo surrounding mental illness in Morocco, by establishing exchange and discussion around pathologies and discomforts of Moroccan society, continues the same source.
Scripted photos (out of respect for the privacy of the protagonists) representing different states of mind, but also reflections in patients with mental illnesses.
Patients and carers from pavilion 36 are presented, in an exhibition hitherto unseen in Morocco, in order to offer a wide audience not only images of the daily life of the residents of the pavilion, but also a great reflection on mental illness in Morocco.
An inclusive exhibition that takes into consideration all aspects of the lives of patients with mental illnesses and fights against all forms of stigma and taboos that have surrounded them for generations.
Photos where we find loneliness, disarray, imagination, wandering… But also smiles, hope and confidence in a better tomorrow.
Beauty and madness, is not only an exposure of the daily life of those who are described as “crazy and crazy”, but a dive, heart first, into the minute details that embody the present of the “tenants”. of pavilion 36 of Casa.
A department that has caused a lot of ink to flow, inspired a lot of cinema and theater, without really being dedicated to its residents.
Reflections and questions follow one another, without leaving room for prejudices and received ideas about the universe so apprehended by the mentally ill.
To accompany these photographs, two women writers and journalists lent themselves to the exercise of contemplation and prose.
Each photo on display is in communion with an unpublished text, published for the first time and which tries to put words to the ills in images.
The texts of Khouloud Kebali and Lamia Berrada come from another universe, very far from what people with mental illness actually experience, but they are nevertheless the closest to what the spirits live and/or undergo every day.
Of incomprehension, of the absolute dream, of hope, of injustice, of abandonment, but also of these secret worlds that we keep to ourselves and in which we only allow those who want to “understand” to enter. without any judgement.
Beauty and Madness, two words that are difficult to place in the same sentence, which arouse a new reaction, like an invitation to consider beauty in everything, even in this world that is described as dark and frightening. , precisely because we don’t have the time, nor the energy, nor the strength to understand.
Beauty and Madness, however, is obvious when you take the time to contemplate a photo, read a text or just imagine “the invisible to the eyes”.
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