An exhibition titled “Art Behind Bars” will be opened on 20th November (at 2pm) in the main gallery of the Grad Cultural Centre in Belgrade.
The exhibition will showcase art work done by the prisoners who are hospitalized at the Special Prison Hospital in Belgrade. The artwork is a part of the work occupational therapy that has been implemented in the hospital since 1969 as a way of rehabilitating the psychiatric patients and patients suffering from addictions that have been hospitalized following a court order. The artwork will be sold in order to help the treatment programme which is in dire need of financing.
The exhibition will be opened until 25th November, and visitors are also encouraged to donate books for the prison hospital library, as well as drawing, painting, and sculpting material so that the occupational therapy could continue.
There is even an artistic movement called Art Brut which promotes artwork created by hospitalized prisoners. Art Brut is a term coined by Jean Dubuffet in 1948 and stands for art based on pure sensation, unimpaired by the shackles of education, close to the Cubists and the Dadaists form the beginning of the century. The movement embraces the works of marginalized groups, prisoners, psychiatric patients, children, unschooled authors, creative people outside the system and women who are living on society’s margins. In Serbia, Art Brut is promoted by Goran Stojcetovic, the founder of Art Brut Serbia Association and internet portal artbrut-inside.org.
(Blic, 17.11.2017)
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