{"id":55692,"title":"The pivotal turn of art as healer","description":"Edith Doove: \"After a recent decisive experience in Tanzania, I radically transformed my curatorial practice to set up a platform dedicated to the field of art and care: *hadithi - stories with care. Not much after its symbolic inauguration on Chinese New Year coinciding with the start of Ramadan and a solar eclipse, the 17th of February, I approached Ninette Murk for a possible collaboration and soon after Healing Art Works was born.\"","content":"

\"uz0brzpa66dcfwz3owwu8pi78ucjllczqrfntyo5mpgmrm50.jpg.jpg?w=1140&project=healing-art-works-440768&v=2\"D.H.O.A., a mural in the infectious diseases department selected by the teams, CHU Rouen, 2026<\/span><\/em><\/p>

Edith Doove<\/strong>:<\/p>

Growing up as the daughter of artists, I\u2019ve been surrounded by art for as long as I can remember. My biological father was a painter and a teacher at the local art academy. He had met my mum at another art academy where she learned weaving. His father was a professional violinist who played above my crib, causing me to this day to rhythmically move my hands whenever I listen to classical music. It was therefore somewhat unavoidable that I would become active in the arts myself later in life. Hesitating between the art academy and university, I chose in the end the latter and started studying art history as I was intrigued by the phenomenon itself and not so much in creating myself. Later I started a career as curator in which over almost 40 years I\u2019ve always let my inquisitive curiosity guide me. My disenchantment with the commercial art world led me eventually to pursue a PhD with Transtechnology Research at the University of Plymouth on the influence of laughter on collaboration and in which I referred to the caring role of the curator based on the Latin origin curare or taking care. Eventually I would reconnect with my own art practice and apply this as a member of the Faculty of Minor Disturbances Research Group.[i]<\/span><\/a><\/p>

\"lbavfdbnur6znsdhtguzp0ic5mqyvps4benyt8n1sf0g6wfb.jpg.jpg?w=1140&project=healing-art-works-440768&v=2\"\u00a0D.H.O.A., a mural in the infectious diseases department selected by the teams, CHU Rouen, 2026<\/span><\/em><\/p>

As an explicitly trans-disciplinary researcher it was equally inevitable that I would sooner or later be attracted by the emerging field of art and care. After a recent decisive experience in Tanzania, I radically transformed my curatorial practice to set up a platform dedicated to the field of art and care: *hadithi - stories with care<\/strong>. Not much after its symbolic inauguration on Chinese New Year coinciding with the start of Ramadan and a solar eclipse, the 17th of February, I approached Ninette Murk for a possible collaboration and soon after Healing Art Works was born. Within this project we certainly each have our own approach and preferences, but we connect in the way that we want to bring art and care together and ameliorate hospitals and other healthcare environments. In this we\u2019re definitely not the first or the only ones. The art and care field is in rapid expansion and it\u2019s clear that it answers to an important need. But Ninette and I believe that we can add our own voice and approach to this via our specific backgrounds, experiences and networks.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

The researcher that I am was, and still is, deeply interested in the why<\/em> of art<\/strong>. Why did humans feel this necessity to create from about 40,000 years back? The first hand prints or stencils remain for me emblematic. Going back about 37,000 years they can not only be found in various sites around the world, but they clearly were a direct way for humans to directly connect with their surrounding world and leave a mark. Then and now this world can be overwhelming, urging humans to respond to it in one way or another. Whether this leads to the depiction of wild animals in cave paintings or abstract introspective contemporary pieces remains in my view basically the same. Art is an inherent necessity of expression which is luckily increasingly recognised.<\/p>

\"qsyw1kdlqlp0ehhlsyhhuhqlrkg6xnri0jfvkgqwj9cxjd3r.jpg.jpg?w=1140&project=healing-art-works-440768&v=2\"Ona IWOSAN, mural in a corridor in a mental health hospital in Lagos, Nigeria.<\/span>\u00a0 Photo courtesy of The Art of Healing.<\/em><\/p>

From the wide range of publications that have been published recently we learn that viewing visual artwork doesn\u2019t only have a beneficial effect on the mental and physical health of patients, but on that of staff and visitors as well.[ii]<\/span><\/a> Certainly one of the most successful publications is that of Daisy Fancourt\u2019s recent Art Cure<\/em> \u2013 The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health (Penguin Books, 2026. It\u2019s the outcome of her research as a Professor of Psychobiology and Epidemiology at University College London where she heads the Social Biobehavioural Research Group and as Director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre on Arts and Health. <\/span>The success of her book makes her a frequent guest in all kinds of podcasts, webinars and conferences and co-author of reviews such as the recent \u2018Mechanisms underpinning the mental health impact of arts engagement\u2019 in Nature Reviews Psychology. In this she and her co-authors Argyris Stringaris and Pier Luigi Sacco introduce the intriguing concept of the \u2018arts exposome\u2019: daily art engagement that has positive impact on mental health<\/span>.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

The success of Fancourt\u2019s book shows that her research and that of many others has clearly struck a chord. The insight that art, whether seen or practiced, is not just some fancy waste of time and money, but should actually be seen as an important pillar of health, contributing to mental and physical health as well as social connection and even longevity, is an important pivotal turn. I feel that this success is somehow related with the disenchantment that I felt with the commercial art world which drove me to change my practice and that it might contribute to an important redevelopment.<\/p>

\"nx3nvknar5bgeymwayiigcibg41okxlf6wqh5nhracuthgqi.jpg.jpg?w=1140&project=healing-art-works-440768&v=2\"Edith DOOVE, Cushion cover \u2013 Hannah\u2019s van \u2013 Item 15, research drawing, 2020<\/em><\/p>

In the research that I connect to the projects of hadithi <\/em>such as Healing Art Works I\u2019m specifically interested in bringing together various viewpoints \u2013 from that of the artist, the curator, the patient and the caregiver; from the maker and the viewer, whether professional or amateur. And of that of the transdisciplinary researcher and curator that I am who\u2019s equally interested in the origin of this movement. This can no doubt be connected to that of ecological art and the care for the world at large and thus to feminist theories of love and care originating in the sixties. I addressed these in my art history lectures on art in the Anthropocene for a higher art education institution, but also in the curating of the 2023 Watou Arts Festival that I connected to Bruno Latour\u2019s notion of care and composition. In that sense I didn\u2019t so much change my practice with the creation of the hadithi platform as simply articulate it.<\/p>

\"uam7idjp8dlaxyjhlfyseq2tssrnvmvahxe1w4fj0s5htaae.jpg.jpg?w=1140&project=healing-art-works-440768&v=2\"Elisabeth HENRIKSSON, privacy screens for a neonatal ward at Stockholm South General Hospital, 2023<\/em><\/p>

Within this context I\u2019m specifically interested in the different ways of how art and care can be implemented. From showing beauty in healthcare institutions, as Ninette and I intend to do with Healing Art Works, or renovating a hospital ward in Lagos to develop a scalable model in the recent and exiting collaboration with the biomedical engineer Abimbola Odiase and artist-photographer Bolaji Alonge for the local Healing Haven Project, to phenomena as art on prescription and art therapy. One overarching question that intrigues me is the issue of quality \u2013 does anything go, if it comes to healing through art, or does the quality of the art and its curation, however subjective that may be, make a difference? And how does this notion work when applied to bringing art in healthcare institutions, art therapy and art on prescription? How careful do we need to be with the implementation of AI in this context? Are there any possible negative aspects we need to be wary of? What is clear to me is that the wide diversity of art expression needs to remain preserved and acknowledged, but that to concentrate only on so-called \u2018high art\u2019 would be missing the point.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

Thus many questions remain, but overall this pivotal turn makes me excited and inspired about its development and the promising exchanges with other practitioners and researchers from different fields. And certainly also those that benefit from the arts for their wellbeing. So far it seems to be a generous field in which people are not shy to exchange and collaborate freely in defiance of a world that seems to be increasingly harsh and overwhelming. What this success of the art and care field finally also proofs, is that art deserves the funding and support that it\u2019s been fighting for since a long time. Or as Daisy Fancourt put it in a recent webinar on prescriptive art \u2013 if a drug would have the same catalogue of benefits that the arts have proven to provide, we would be fighting to get our hands on it, paying premium prices and be taking it every day. So let\u2019s start doing that.<\/p>

\"yy9okfcgcxnjray6swcwdreal9bd4qkyxq9sg23pbhxk5ani.jpeg.jpeg?w=1140&v=2\"Edith Doove, Wild, photo, 2025<\/em><\/p>

\u00a0[i]<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 See https:\/\/vagaboundsresearch.org\/fmd\/<\/a><\/p>

[ii]<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The overwhelming amount of recent publications to which I count books, articles, reviews, podcasts and webinars, illustrates the success of this emerging field. I am compiling these in a bibliography that you can find here\u00a0 - https:\/\/hadithi.net\/art-health\/<\/a><\/p>

<\/p>","urlTitle":"edith-doove-co-founder-haw","url":"\/blog\/edith-doove-co-founder-haw\/","editListUrl":"\/my-blogs","editUrl":"\/my-blogs\/edit\/edith-doove-co-founder-haw\/","fullUrl":"https:\/\/healingartworks.org\/blog\/edith-doove-co-founder-haw\/","featured":false,"published":true,"showOnSitemap":true,"hidden":false,"visibility":null,"createdAt":1774969626,"updatedAt":1775570992,"publishedAt":1775570991,"lastReadAt":null,"division":{"id":429778,"name":"Healing Art Works"},"tags":[],"metaImage":{"original":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/m3lkctgplpxn1mbphse0whcfamkewmgelk68xegjscdpsquu.jpeg","thumbnail":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/m3lkctgplpxn1mbphse0whcfamkewmgelk68xegjscdpsquu.jpeg.jpg?w=1140&h=855","banner":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/m3lkctgplpxn1mbphse0whcfamkewmgelk68xegjscdpsquu.jpeg.jpg?w=1920&h=1440"},"metaTitle":"","metaDescription":"","keyPhraseCampaignId":null,"series":[],"similarReads":[{"id":55618,"title":"HAW Artist: Katharine Hamnett","url":"\/blog\/haw-artist-katharine-hamnett\/","urlTitle":"haw-artist-katharine-hamnett","division":429778,"description":"Designer and activist Katharine Hamnett is one of the pioneers of modern British fashion. She invented the much copied slogan T-shirt, was the first to use distressed denim and championed organic cotton long before many were aware of the damage that conventional production causes to the environment.","published":true,"metaImage":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/xjonuyygkj9zgqdlg5ppbthx5eayu48ncoxqfl1lwdhiaqdr.jpeg.jpg?w=1140&h=855","banner":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/xjonuyygkj9zgqdlg5ppbthx5eayu48ncoxqfl1lwdhiaqdr.jpeg.jpg?w=1920&h=1440"},"hidden":0},{"id":55714,"title":"HAW Artist: Jimi Dams","url":"\/blog\/haw-artist-jimi-dams\/","urlTitle":"haw-artist-jimi-dams","division":429778,"description":"Jimi Dams (b. June 21, 1963, Mortsel, Belgium) is a Belgian-born artist based in New York. Following his graduation in Brussels in 1984, he relocated to Antwerp, where he first established his artistic practice.","published":true,"metaImage":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/gksy3nwhwh2cexjesnn0a1up6ueppm6etxxota0nq3dji05j.png.jpg?w=1140&h=855","banner":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/gksy3nwhwh2cexjesnn0a1up6ueppm6etxxota0nq3dji05j.png.jpg?w=1920&h=1440"},"hidden":0},{"id":55711,"title":"HAW Artists: Beatrijs Albers & Reggy Timmermans","url":"\/blog\/haw-artists-beatrijs-albers-reggy-timmermans\/","urlTitle":"haw-artists-beatrijs-albers-reggy-timmermans","division":429778,"description":"Beatrijs Albers and Reggy Timmermans view their work as a \u2018perhaps\u2019. This means that, in a sense, it is undefined. This could be interpreted negatively, but in fact the glass is half full rather than half empty.","published":true,"metaImage":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/pdjkb1dyxeqx4an3ewnzowdpyar9lzbw7juugdrjvvwyllnk.jpeg.jpg?w=1140&h=855","banner":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/pdjkb1dyxeqx4an3ewnzowdpyar9lzbw7juugdrjvvwyllnk.jpeg.jpg?w=1920&h=1440"},"hidden":0}],"labels":[]}