Hours, Armelle

From one shore to another: Warli art (India). Cultural collaborations in an institutional experience - 2024.


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This study recounts an experience, unexpected at first glance, but which can be linked to the concepts of institutional psychotherapy. It concerns an encounter between a group of disabled adults from the Lyon suburbs and an Indian painter from the Warli tribe, Reena Vansing Valvi. The aim was to establish cultural collaborations for the joint creation of a Warli mural. It started with a writing skills workshop, followed by the conversion of the writings into a story, which in turn led to the creation of the mural. In the course of this shared creation, the potency of the art piece itself was clear. This Warli mural provided an intercultural and intersubjective opening, and its supportive role deployed and was enhanced as its creation progressed, endowing it with an existence of its own.