THE UNFINISHED GESTURE OF HANDS: THE INSTALLATION OF PAINTING AS A DEVICE OF CARE IN A PSYCHOSOCIAL CARE CENTER

Abstract

This production stems from experiences of a Psychology Internship at a Psychosocial Care Center II (CAPS II) in Southern Brazil. Understood as a first step toward what Psychosocial Care can be, the CAPS experiences its power to transform and disrupt the established order of things. Situated in a challenging context of precariousness, the CAPS, once a field, still finds ways to operate creatively and collectively, thus sustaining the narrative, politics, and desire for a paradigm based on Psychosocial Care. Art, as a care device, stands out as one of these solutions, witnessed in the field and transcribed in this report, whose objective is to describe the internship experience based on the experience at the LoucurArte painting workshop. The scientific and political intention is to discuss how art can be understood as an act of care, a vector in the production of meaning. The method used was experience reporting, in dialogue with cartography, based on field diary entries. As a result, the encounter of art as an expressive resource stands out, in a public policy on mental health that considers the aesthetic experience a fundamental part of human existence.