For the upcoming WALCafé dedicated to Walking Art & Mental Health on October 28th, following a presentation of my current stage of research at WAC25 International Encounters, I would like to share some words and images to contextualize my artistic practice.

My research centres on linking the imaginary of walking with certain procedures in psychiatric practice—usually associated with physical restraint, isolation and sedation.

I start with the connection between the imagery of madness and that of wandering. Historically, since antiquity, those who lost reason (Ánoia, Paránoia) were expelled from the city walls. In popular imagery, madness causes isolation in forests and paths far from communal human life. With the birth of the modern state and the emergence of asylums, the “mad” became observable beings confined to cells. Psychiatry as a science, born in the nineteenth century through its attempt to catalogue abnormality, was founded upon the observation of facial features, gestures, and reactions—without questioning the lived experience of the person or their possible sources of oppression.

Today, in line with approaches that aim to humanize treatments, the mad person as a walker seems to me both an exercise in memory and a way of relating to the psyche. During my walks, I find and collect materials that allow me to make connections with the language and history of psychiatry. Sometimes I walk in search of places I have first seen in my imagination. Other times I imagine what it would be like to walk through places that are not walkable, or I trace what has been walked through findings, mapping or collecting.

To illustrate how I reflect on what madness is, and on possible practices that could transform treatments, I would like to introduce four pieces or projects that incorporate walking imagery and bring together medicine and history or anthropology.

First, drawing on the Situationist technique of détournement, the project Iconographie Iconographique du Souffriment, is inspired by the first photographic manual of psychiatry, which catalogued bodily expressions as pathological through photographic captions, with the goal of constructing a diagnostic chart.

Works such as Head to the Ground, The Stone of Madness, Mood Regulators, and The Room of Eyes are examples of this poetic approach toward what could be understood as an “alternative” psychiatric manual—one that seeks to emphasize the need to pay attention and care to the body when we experience psychic exhaustion.

Second, a work reflecting on the distance (symbolic or physical) that people who respond in non-normative ways often experience from common spaces. Oîstros: stimulus, inspiration is a recording that recalls the ancient roots of such behavior. In this action, in which I crossed the border from Spain to France, I recreated the political exile of Io, one of the figures from Greek tragedy that best represents madness. Pursued by a distress caused by both Zeus and Hera, Io walked, suffering and wandering, until she crossed her country’s border—at which point her torment disappeared.

In the past people were expelled or exiled; today they are admitted—but the factor of distance remains, between the source of distress and the one who experiences it. This distance still persists within institutions today, through forced interventions and uninformed treatments—often the result of a lack of human resources to accompany people in crisis. Aiming to reflect on the need to foster an active relationship with one’s human and natural surroundings, the series Mad Maps draws the topographic terrain of psychiatric hospitals in Catalonia that, as reported by witnesses, practice involuntary admissions. These are limited to their perimeters, since sometimes that boundary marks the furthest one is allowed to walk during hospitalization.

These drawings, without their buildings, seek to recognize the terrain where these institutions stand: to imagine its altitude, the vegetation that grows there, the temperature, or the sounds that can be heard. Translated into actions, these proposals suggest practices that could nurture a sense of belonging to spaces that appear distant and cold—especially when one has not chosen to be there. Possible actions can be simple or adaptable, and they are proposed as alternatives to introspective and less relational activities—such as coloring photocopied mandalas stuck in a room. Drawing on these reflections I developed The Loop, a mandala made out of medicine leaflets, which was preceded by a walk through the neighborhood where I currently live in Barcelona.

During this random walk, I gathered samples of the leaves growing in the area. These became templates for the collage, while also making me slow down and recognize the vegetation of a space seemingly dominated by concrete. Continuing with the collage, The Loop seeks to illustrate the cycle of dependency created by the addiction to psychotropic drugs, on paper that usually wraps cotton wool. Since pharmacology has become the standard treatment for managing crises, it often prevents people from seeing themselves beyond the label of “patient”, and from making consensual decisions within their close environments.

In summary, the search for new visualisations around madness gives rise to gestures, drawings, and recordings that serve as pretexts to collectively rethink how we care for our experiences of suffering.

After all, everyone of us is susceptible to experiencing crisis at some point in our lives. That’s why I believe it’s important to think about how we would like to be treated—rather than addressing those who suffer as if they were “others.” By listening, we can even recognize emotions and ways of thinking within ourselves. Perhaps, by recognizing ourselves within a shared “we,” we can begin to speak of suffering as a vector of strength—one that humanizes diversity in the ways we walk and think in spaces that we share.