The Foundation for Art and Psychoanalysis is a cultural platform and registered charity that aims to support a wide range of creative and critical practices in order to contribute to the preservation of cultural heritage.
Conceived in 2013 by Camille Germanos Al Hasan, the Foundation has a collaborative ethos, fostering dialogues between creators, thinkers, as well as public and private institutions.
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Through a multifaceted exchange between the fields of psychoanalysis, social sciences, humanities, and the arts, we work to promote the potential of artworks as documents of an overlooked history, embodiments of social symptoms that precede and exceed the limitations of ‘official’ discourses.
As a platform that is committed to giving visibility to unconscious, erased, and excluded voices, our work is not constricted by format or geography. By ‘cultural heritage’, we understand a rich and complex field, which cannot be defined outside the particular conditions of a given society or without understanding how a specific community relates to crafts, architecture, music, literature, and visual arts. We are therefore equally appreciative of cultural production regardless of medium, nationality, or professional status of works and creators.
Witnessing the vestiges of past civilisations and vulnerable communities under the constant threat of destruction by war and financial speculation, the Foundation sees creation and preservation as intrinsically connected activities. As a registered charity, it is very important to us that our activity is not shaped by commercial forces and by the demands of the market. We preserve to create, offering present and future generations formative experiences with history, and we create to preserve, commissioning artists to produce works in response to current events. Given the fact that the act of creation is a gesture that touches on the universal, which impacts all people and builds both individual and society, we believe that making works and their history accessible to a large audience is a way to nurture collective memory.
To this end, we organise and assist in the development of events, performances, conferences, and exhibitions. Since 2020, we have started to build an Oral History Collection, featuring works by commissioned artists that re-interpret oral traditions and which are fully available online. Under the imprint of House of Publications, we also produce printed publications to further disseminate our work, understanding printed matter as an important mechanism of preservation.
