Poéticas disidentes de la vida asilar imaginarios y figuras en torno a la construcción de la locura femenina en el asilo de locas de Bogotá 1945 - 1955

Abstract

Since the historical reconstruction of psychiatric practices in el Asilo de Locas de Bogotá, 1945-1955, it has been conceptualized that female madness was described from a biological dimension,associated with the dysfunctionality of women´s domestic roles. Using the technologies of convulsive therapy, electroshock, and prefrontal lobotomies, psychiatry creates scenarios about mental patients where narratives of exclusion emerge and rules of asylum life are normalized. Drawing from archives of photographic images, which can be seen as a means of researching the social imagination, it seeks to narrate the daily life in the Asilo de Locas as an alternative to the official medical records. “Jaula," a photobook created in the 1960´s, pioneered the history of artistic practices in a psychiatric context in Colombia. It consists of 42 photographs and 16 poems that confront us from the poetic to the threshold of the experience of madness. These sensitive materials translate into an audiovisual installation where figures and voices, created through dialogue between visual-textual traces, emerge from the remains of both a living and a scientific memory.