mobile research psychiatry

Salmaritin is a fictive village born from the meeting of “La S Grand Atelier”, an Art Brut contemporary center, and myself, where the notion of deviance is constantly questioned within a psychiatric background. In this imaginary space, every artist of “La S” gave themselve a specific role while I incarnated the fool confronting the village’s norms and rules. Through a human, organic and artistic dialogue, I created relationships with the inhabitants of this strange village.

In this book, I tell the story of how I encountered the artists of the atelier in a lineary way during three months, event by event, slowly becoming closer and friends in the end. Through the artworks made together, the crazy anecdotes that happened everyday in this place and interviews with specialists of Art Brut and the psychiatric institution about the importance of the village fool, this work is a celebration of deviance and madness.

300 pages, 24x32cm

The village of Salmaritin

This installation is the final act of the project of “Salmaritin” made during three months at “La S Grand Atelier”, an Art Brut Contemporary center located in the Belgian Ardennes. We collectively created a fictive village where every artist would have a specific role, a place where to live and work, and I would be the village fool, since I had to adapt to the rules and norms of the atelier to meet the people there.
Once all was set and everybody had drawn their own house, we built out of cardboard a maquette of Salmaritin and made it a whole playground to create anything around it.

On the back right of the maquette, there’s a mountain atop of which is a fictive version of a psychiatric hospital close to the atelier, standing there to remind the village of the institution it lives in. From its point of view, every house in the village turns its back from it.

160 x 160 x 90 cm

Some of the houses of Salmaritin, made by the artists for themselves.

Drawings of Salmaritin

A selection of the artworks made during three months at La S Grand Atelier, an Art Brut Contemporary center located in the Belgian Ardennes. These were made as part of the project of the fictive village Salmaritin, to enlarge the small universe we were building together. They were also vectors for human encounters, and creating links in other ways than through vocal dialogues.

Conversation Matters - Le village sans fous

Those texts contain a research on the importance of the «village fool» figure within society and the psychiatric institution, and also an interview of Anne-Françoise Rouche, the director of a renowned Art Brut Contemporary center in Belgium called « La S Grand Atelier ». To illustrate these subject matters, I realised a series of illustration around the theme of the “fool” and took pictures at La S Grand Atelier.

Se perdre dans une petite pièce

A text about the wandering of people living in psychiatric institutions, read and played as an audio in an installation. Another version of the same text is written on paper sheets assembled on the bed used in that same installation. This work is a research on the theme of the village fool.