In 2016 I got a call from Nadia Collette, an art therapist at the palliative care unit of the Hospital de Sant Pau in Barcelona. I had a project in mind for patients, their families (through bereavement) and artists from various disciplines to collaborate on a large exhibition. The process, very simplified, consisted of some of Nadia’s patients working on their disease process through expressiveness and art. With the resulting works, months later, his relatives reworked those ideas through mourning. At some point in the process, we, the “artists”, met with them and did some joint art therapy sessions. We gathered the ideas of patients and families and put them into our own work. It all culminated in a wonderful exhibition in a huge modernist hall in Sant Pau.
My works represented the three reiterative elements of one of those patients: the gaze, the stars and the sea.
Beyond the creative part, it was a wonderful experience, full of affection. Death, bereavement and the limitation of one’s existence should not be something to be avoided.
