Exhibition tour “Selbst Bild Gestaltung” open art museum

Exhibition tour through “A dream of a ball gown” in dialog with mabo-art, kunst & konzept, artist Ursula Bohren

Ursula Bohren came to the clinic for the first time in the 1980s and worked with female patients - women and men were still categorically separated. She witnessed the establishment of the picture camp and got to know some of the patients as artists. She returned to the clinic in 1995 and 2016-2018 and was a member of the Art Commission of the University Psychiatric Clinics (UPK) Basel.

Concepts of health and illness are subject to social change, scientific findings, a political agreement on norm and deviation as well as our understanding of concepts of life, which are currently being strongly negotiated again. The supporting program for the exhibition “A dream of a ball gown” is therefore not geared towards a deficit-based understanding of illness; the focus is on mental health. The aim is also to open up new perspectives on healing art and creative ways of promoting mental health. Psychiatrists at the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th century were already aware of the positive effect of artistic creation on mental health long before art therapy was offered.