The art installation ‘Stultifera navis’, by Patricia Gómez and María Jesús González, is made up of a series of sculptural pieces—a total of 13—based on one of the elements that is repeated and has a very significant presence in every psychiatric institution: bathtubs. The works, which form part of a broader work dedicated to exploring the memory of the last Psychiatric Hospital in València, delve into the particular history of the old Padre Jofré Hospital in Bétera to reflect on the figure of the asylum as a mirror of society.
The title of the art installation refers to the symbolic figure of ‘the mad ship’. Emerging in the Renaissance, this concept alludes to the wandering existence of madmen or dimwits who were embarked on these ships to be expelled from the cities. On a symbolic level, the ship can signify the pilgrimage of madness in search of reason and its purification, through the water on which they sail. In this sense, bathtubs fulfilled an important therapeutic and normative function in the past, but, at the same time, like all traces, they fulfil a testimonial function in the present with great symbolic potential. On the one hand, their emptiness recalls and points to absent bodies, and on the other, it functions as a symbol of this social wrecking that represents the failure of the asylum system and the society that created it.
In addition, these two artists complement with this art installation the project ‘Mirror of the World’, which occupies the Open Room of The Ship: another art installation that recovers a total of 113 original mirrors from the centre of Bétera, through which the historical and social conception of madness as a condition symmetrically opposed to reason is questioned.
Both proposals are part of the ambitious exhibition project ‘The mad ship. An odyssey of unreason’, organised and produced by the Universitat de València, through the Office of the Vice-Principal for Culture and Society.
Project carried out with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Sport. 2020-2021
