In my photographs, the models – who are volunteers and not my patients – are engaged in a profound process, in the sense that they seek a path that draws out their gestures, whilst imagining the audience that will witness them. In this series of manually modified photographs, the ‘practices’ of the consulting room have merged with the ‘art’ of photography, creating images that compel and insist that the gaze of the audience, once imagined, coincides with the gaze of the models.

These are dark and turbulent times. In the future, there will be healing, but we will already be marked by the scars of the wounds inflicted on our democracy, our planet and our mental health. We confront, and will continue to confront, the inhumanity and injustice towards those who have been deemed invisible and denied the right to their subjectivity due to their race, sexuality, gender identity, age, ethnicity and/or disability. We acknowledge and carefully observe the violence of our past so that it is not repeated in the future. These wounds symbolise our losses, which must be acknowledged so that we may mourn and transform them, in order for change to occur.

The photographs, printed with pigment ink on archival paper, are torn to materialise the wounds representing individual and collective suffering, so that they may subsequently be ‘healed’. The tears are covered with gold rice paper and mended with haphazard stitches of gold thread – the inspiration came from the Japanese practice of kintsugi, an ancient technique which, metaphorically,

honours the acceptance of the damage as part of the object’s life, integrating these

experiences into its new form. In kintsugi, broken pottery is 

repaired with a mixture of lacquer and gold dust, whereby the damaged areas are highlighted and illuminated by the golden cracks, rather than covered or concealed.

Through their pose, gestures, gaze and occasional props, the subjects find their narratives, regain some power of action and invite the observer to view them in all their humanity. Although the American flag has acquired a complex Being who we are can be traumatic, especially in disruptive cultures. Through her portraits, the voices of those portrayed, the tears in the photographs and the ingenious kintsugi repair, Donna Bassin makes us experience the trauma of the other and our own wounds.

To experience is to integrate, to be aware of the beauty that is possible, which is very much present in Donna’s photographs. Visible trauma, in our consciousness, as in these photographs, is mental health. Donna’s gestures of empathy and her willingness to bear witness are therapeutic for us, as we journey into the worlds of the trauma experience, and for those portrayed, who see their trauma acknowledged, but also their subjectivity valued and accepted just as it is, without prior definition or labels of any kind, because each of us is unique and deserves to be discovered in that uniqueness. This is mental health, because it gives meaning to life.

Hélder Chambel

OPENING PROGRAMME

4pm | Exhibition opening

5pm | Screening of the film Leave no Soldier by Donna Bassin

5.50pm | Dialogue: 25 April: Trauma and Revolution. Perspectives from Relational Psychoanalysis with Donna Bassin and Hélder Chambel

Leave No Soldier

A documentary by Donna Bassin that follows two communities of US war veterans, divided by their politics but united in their dedication to managing and transforming the losses and trauma of war into moral protest, social activism and post-traumatic resilience.

Conversation: 25 April Dialogue: Trauma and Revolution. Perspectives from

Relational Psychoanalysis with Donna Bassin and Hélder Chambel

Presentations by a speaker from PsiRelacional, Hélder Chambel, who will explore the connection between Donna’s work on trauma and the Portuguese context, specifically trauma now, before and after 25 April. Commentary by Donna Bassin and discussion with the audience.

Exhibition open from 27 April to 8 June 2024

This exhibition is organised in collaboration with the Incubator Gallery and PsiRelacional Association of Relational Psychoanalysis.

https://www.donnabassin.com

Directed by Manuela Matos Monteiro and João Lafuente

Assistant: Luísa Rosas da Silva

This exhibition integrate the project (In)visibilidades e derivas supported by DGARTES

Donna Bassin is an art therapist, clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst,filmmaker and photographer. She is an adjunct lecturer and clinical assistant in the postdoctoral programme in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis at New York University, where she teaches “Grief as Transformation: The Creative Edge of Traumatic and Normal Grief.” She has published books, critical reviews, and articles on gender, motherhood, community activism, grief, and memoirs. Her photographs have been exhibited in museums and galleries, and her two award-winning documentaries have been screened at conferences: *Leave no Soldier* and *The Mourning After*. These documentaries tell the stories of American veterans as they explore and share the impact of post-traumatic stress on their lives and the role of art and community in their “return home”.