Christian Fogarolli
MIND THE GAP
curated by Giorgia Gastaldon
6 October_4 November 2018
Gorizia
Parco Basaglia, Centro di Salute Mentale
Kinemax
Agorè
MIND THE GAP is a project especially conceived for Parco Basaglia, the place where in 1961 the homonymous Italian psychiatrist started his own therapeutic (and social) revolution. The title of the exhibition – a clear pun between the terms “mind” (brain, memory, sanity) and “gap” (discrepancy, breach, difference) – focuses on diversity as a value worth considering and aims at shedding light on contemporary art as something able to rethink the traditional destination of the places involved and equally able to debunk preconceptions and prejudices that too often still afflict the world of mental health.
In 2018 – which marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of L’istituzione negata. Rapporto da un ospedale psichiatrico (1968) – MIND THE GAP offers, in particular, a reflection on the topic of research and on the value of the archive both present in the work of Franco Basaglia and on its fundamental message: the end of mental institutions as places of containment and imprisonment which exclude patients from society and the beginning of these institutions as a centre of the patients’ inclusion within real life and society.
The exhibition by Christian Fogarolli is split over three locations. First, a site specific installation created ex novo by the artist for the area of Parco Basaglia, since it is based on some of the research conducted by the artists in the archive of the former Provincial Psychiatric Hospital of Gorizia.
The other two locations – the cultural association Agorè and Kinemax – host other works dedicated to other places of mental health and to the topic of memory.