ART AS AN ACT OF RESISTANCE AGAINST THE PATHOLOGIZATION OF EXISTENCE: AN EXPERIENCE REPORT IN A CAPS II

Abstract

This work aims to reflect on art as a care device within the context of a Psychosocial Care Center II (CAPS II) in southern Brazil. Written as an experience report, the article discusses how the political dimension of art can mobilize forces that counteract the pathologization of existence. This movement emerges from the potential of aesthetic experience to create openings in processes of subjectivation, enabling modes of expression and the emergence of singularity. Such processes unfold in a unique temporality; therefore, we sought to investigate their effects in two moments: within the workshops and beyond them. The method followed the principles of intervention research, whose foundation lies in the insertion of researchers as another—non-neutral—force within the field of analysis and practice. The results were tied to the domain of art as a catalyst for sparks of potency, both for service users and for the institution that welcomes them, constituting an inventive practice within the psychosocial model and resisting neoliberal forces that attempt to reinstate asylum-based approaches. Thus, artistic practices at the CAPS operate as a form of resistance against the pathologization of existence.