Arts and crafts: Between creativity and techniques learning, art and work, identity and subjectivity

How categories such as “arts and crafts”, “popular art” and “manual works” are manipulated in the context where the artistry market in Rio de Janeiro comes into contact with the artistry production of the “community” of mental health? The native use of the category “community”, as a form of totaling a heterogeneous group, is a rhetorical construction that appears at the same time as a device for blurring the borders that separate “users of mental health services”, from its relatives and from technician that take care of such people - becoming all of them part of one single group - and an essencialization of a border that separates this “community” from the national society – the “normal” people. One of the specificities of this group of artistry producers is that it cannot be thought of as a “community” in the conventional sense of the term, that is, a group that shares a common origin - real or imagined -, distinctive territory, same cultural values and the idea of belonging that makes it possible the construction of public politics and social identities. Still, many devices for setting identity landmarks have been used in the current Psychiatric Reformation movement in Brazil treating it as any other kind comunity (ethnic, religious etc). Artistic manifestations have functioned as privileged instruments in this process. Several contradictions lie behind this process such as the representations that separate creativity and techniques learning, art and work, identity and subjectivity. These contradictions mostly related with the axiology of the contemporary artistic phenomena, the values that support the artistry production classifications and the representations on madness and the idea of social identity related to it is what I intend to develop in this presentation.