D.H.O.A., a mural in the infectious diseases department selected by the teams, CHU Rouen, 2026
Edith Doove
Growing up as the daughter of artists, I’ve 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’ve 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]
D.H.O.A., a mural in the infectious diseases department selected by the teams, CHU Rouen, 2026
As an explicitly transdisciplinary researcher, it was inevitable that I would be drawn to the emerging field of art and care sooner or later. It’s a field that is rapidly expanding and clearly answers to a hardfelt need.
As a researcher, I am deeply interested in the why of art. 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.
Ona IWOSAN, mural in a corridor in a mental health hospital in Lagos, Nigeria. Photo courtesy of The Art of Healing.
From the wide range of publications that have been published recently we learn that viewing visual artwork doesn’t only have a beneficial effect on the mental and physical health of patients, but on that of staff and visitors as well.[ii] Certainly one of the most successful publications is that of Daisy Fancourt’s recent Art Cure – The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health (Penguin Books, 2026. It’s 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. 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 ‘Mechanisms underpinning the mental health impact of arts engagement’ in Nature Reviews Psychology. In this she and her co-authors Argyris Stringaris and Pier Luigi Sacco introduce the intriguing concept of the ‘arts exposome’: daily art engagement that has positive impact on mental health.
Edith DOOVE, Cushion cover – Hannah’s van – Item 15, research drawing, 2020
The success of Fancourt’s 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.
In the research that I connect to the projects of hadithi such as Healing Art Works I’m specifically interested in bringing together various viewpoints – 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’s 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’s notion of care and composition. In that sense I didn’t so much change my practice with the creation of the hadithi platform as simply articulate it.
Elisabeth HENRIKSSON, privacy screens for a neonatal ward at Stockholm South General Hospital, 2023
Within this context I’m specifically interested in the different ways of how art and care can be implemented. From bringing artworks into healthcare institutions to phenomena such as art on prescription and art therapy. One overarching question that intrigues me is the issue of quality – 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? How careful do we need to be when implementing AI in this context? Are there any potential negative aspects we should 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 ‘high art’ would be missing the point.
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 also finally proves is that art deserves the funding and support it’s been fighting for for a long time. Or as Daisy Fancourt put it in a recent webinar on prescriptive art, if a drug had 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 taking it every day. So let’s start doing that.
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