psychoanalysis, art and feminism

on Flavia Corpas, Francielle Alves and Isabela Pinheiro

Dates: September 09, 16, 23, 30, October 07, 14, 21 and 28, 2025
Tuesdays
Hour: 19h to 21h
Duration: 08 meetings
Audience: general interested parties
Investment: R$ 640,00 + fees

Online course
Live, via video conferencing platform
Recorded classes available for a limited time only
Course includes certificate at the end

This course is a territory of resistance and creation. It explores the intersection of psychoanalysis, art, and feminism, guided by the work of the collective P_A_F (Psychoanalysis, Art, and Feminism). In a format that values ​​critical dialogue and the collective construction of knowledge, the course will explore artworks and testimonies of women artists who challenge and subvert traditional discourses, forging new paths of existence. The course will explore the ways in which these works challenge stereotypes and normative models, revealing how these artists claim and create their own spaces and languages ​​to express experiences, traumas, and desires, not only as a survival strategy, but as a full affirmation of life.

The meetings will cover themes within feminism in its various aspects, such as black feminism, decolonial feminism, queer feminism, among others, and will analyze political, cultural, and identity issues that permeate artistic practices, based on a psychoanalytic reading. 

Agenda

Class 01 – Introduction
In the introductory class, we will present the course, its theoretical foundations, and methodology, focusing on the relationship between psychoanalysis, art, and feminism. We will address how these three fields of knowledge intersect, their connections and tensions, and how, based on these, it is possible to challenge and rethink conventional narratives about subjectivity, identity, and the body, enabling the construction of new logics. We will provide an introduction to feminism, paving the way for understanding it in the dialogue between psychoanalysis and art.

• Presentation of the course and its methodology.
• What is the relationship between psychoanalysis and art? Why feminism?

Class 02 – Rethinking Official Narratives
In this class, we will analyze how official narratives of art history have often marginalized or rendered invisible the contributions of women artists. We will reflect on how the feminist perspective proposes a radical critique of this hegemonic knowledge, introducing the idea of ​​a situated perspective that values ​​the experiences and contexts of each subject. By questioning traditional representations, we will seek to broaden our perspective on the diversity of artistic experiences and practices, based on the recovery of the lives and work of some artists, and the analysis of the exhibition "Women's Contribution to the Visual Arts in Brazil" at MAM-SP (1960), the first group exhibition composed exclusively of women to take place in Brazil, along with what psychoanalysis understands as singularity.

• Women and artists in the history of art
• Book study The History of Art Without Men by art historian Katy Hessel
• Situated Knowledges: The Question of Science for Feminism and the Privilege of Donna Haraway's Partial Perspective
• Exhibition “Women’s Contribution to the Visual Arts in the Country” at MAM-SP (1960)

Class 03 – Freud, Lacan and the Artists
In this class, we will explore the complex relationship between psychoanalysis and art through two recent exhibitions: “Lacan, the Exhibition. When Art Meets Psychoanalysis” (Centre Pompidou-Metz, 2024) and “Women & Freud: Patients, Pioneers, and Artists” (Freud Museum, London, 2024-2025). We will analyze the contributions and legacy of women who played fundamental roles in the creation and development of psychoanalysis, reflecting on their influences and impacts. The analysis will include artists who engage with these exhibitions, such as Paula Rego and Louise Bourgeois, whose works explore psychoanalytic concepts to investigate subjectivity and desire. We will also discuss Deborah de Robertis's performance intervention in Courbet's “The Origin of the World.”

• Exhibition “Lacan, the Exhibition” at the Centre Pompidou – Mets (2024)
• Exhibition “Women & Freud: Patients, Pioneers and Artists”, at the Freud Museum in London (2024-2025)
• Pioneering Women in Psychoanalysis

Class 04 – Insubmissive Muses
In this class, we will question the traditional role of the "muse" in Surrealism, an artistic movement that occupies a pivotal place in the relationship between psychoanalysis and art. We will explore how female artists associated with this movement challenged and subverted this stereotype, reclaiming their place as artists and challenging the traditional notion of femininity held by male Surrealists. We will discuss the book "Down Below," a testimonial work by Leonora Carrington, exploring how her mystical and dreamlike narratives present a unique dimension of resistance, survival, and reinvention.

• The muse and the artist: The case of Surrealism
• Study of the work Down There, examining Leonora Carrington's mystical and dreamlike narratives as instruments of resistance and reinvention of the feminine in the Surrealist movement

Class 05 – Body-Territory, Decolonial Criticism and Indigenous Peoples
In this class, we will explore the political concept of Body-Territory, developed by Maria Mies, Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, and Claudia von Werlhof (1988), which highlights how the exploitation of common, community territories and violence against individual and collective bodies are interrelated. This analogy and inseparability between body and territory, and their subjective effects, will guide our reflections. We will work with artists who use the body as a field of struggle, resisting patriarchal, colonial, and neoliberal impositions, and how the body-territory enables defiance, confrontation, and the invention of other ways of life.

• Colonization and the construction of identity
• “Seed Object” and Politics of the Commons, Study of the Work: “Line” by Eleonora Fabião
• Latin American Artists: Project Study Banana Republic, the work of Victoria Cabezas, and her criticisms of exotification and coloniality; Mexican Territory by Lorena Wolffer; silhouettes – Ana Mendieta, Marcela Cantuaria
• Artists Daiara Tukano and curatorial work Sandra Benites
• The work of Suzanne Césaire

Class 06 – Black Gazes: race, class, gender and representation
In this class, we will discuss the emergence of Black activism and concepts such as Blackness and intersectionality. We will explore how these concepts decenter the perspective and interpretation of what was once considered art, provoking transformations in our subjectivity. In this context, the works portrayed demonstrate a quest to recreate and reinvent a possible world from an aesthetic, ethical, and political perspective. We draw inspiration from the book Black Gazes: Race and Representation by Bell Hooks in dialogue with the works of Brazilian theorists and artists such as Lélia Gonzales, Rosana Paulino and movements from Latin and Central America, such as criollo and Afrosurrealism.

• Afro Surrealism, Afrofuturism in literature and visual arts
• From Sarah Bartmann to Josephine Baker and Rosana Paulino
• Laura – Manet (Still Thinking about Olympia's maid)
• Creole
• Amefricanity

Class 07 – Queer Feminism and Feminist Artists
In this class, we will explore queer feminism in the arts, a debate that has been gaining momentum since the 60s. Artists and collectives have used the queer perspective not only as a critique of gender norms but also as a device to question the boundaries of artistic practice itself. Far from seeking a fixed definition for "feminist art," we will examine how queer feminism operates as a strategy of displacement, reconfiguring materialities, discourses, and imaginaries. Through selected works by artists and collectives working from this perspective, we will see how these practices challenge established notions, questioning traditional categories such as feminine/masculine, public/private, and biological/social.

• Queer Feminism: Between Theme and Experience
• Lia D. Castro; Élle de Bernardini; Queer Screen Printers Collective; ophelia by Ana Mazzei and Regina Parra

Class 08 – Memory, Testimony and Transmission
In this class, we will explore women artists who, through writing, performance, visual art, and other media, have produced powerful testimonies that convey to us something of a way of life. We will discuss the selected works in conjunction with concepts from psychoanalysis and other themes addressed by feminism.

• Study of the work of Grada Kilomba based on her book Plantation Memories, examining how issues of race, gender and coloniality and their artistic practice
• In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens by Alice Walker
• Artists: Cecilia Vicuña

Flavia Corpas

Flavia Corpas is a psychoanalyst working in private practice and an independent curator of visual arts. She holds a postdoctoral degree in Literary Science from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). She holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC/RJ), and was a professor on the Specialization Course in Cultural Accessibility at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). She organized the catalogue raisonné of Arthur Bispo do Rosario and other publications about the artist. She curated the exhibitions "Walter Firmo: A Look at Bispo de Rosario," "Almost Here" by Daniel Senise, "Reflectives" by Iran do Espírito Santo, and "Pilotis" by Katia Wille. She directed the documentaries "Cartographies of Creation," "Art, Culture and Accessibility," and "Walter Firmo: A Look at Bispo de Rosario."

Francielle Alves

is a psychoanalyst and works in private practice, both online and in person, in the city of Maceió. A researcher, essayist, and writer, she has collaborated on projects such as Mandala Lunar®. A feminist, she is a member of the Peasant Women's Movement. She is the founder of IACI®: an independent research and production project interwoven with art, femininity, and women. She is a co-founder of P_A_F: Working and Research Group on Psychoanalysis, Art, and Feminism. She is a member of GEPEF: Feminist Study, Research, and Writing Group, linked to the CNPq (dgp.cnpq.br/dgp/espelhogrupo/0576724885643159). She holds a degree in Psychology (CRP 15-6693) from the Federal University of Alagoas and a degree in Aeronautical Science from UNESA-PROUNI.

Isabela Pinheiro

Isabela Pinheiro is a psychoanalyst and works in private practice. She is a researcher, art curator, and professor. She holds a master's degree in History of Art and Visual Culture from Lindenwood University in the United States and a degree in Psychology from PUC/SP. She is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of History of Art and Visual Culture at Lindenwood University. She co-founded Psychoanalysis, Art and Feminism (P_A_F) and is a member of ALAF (Latin American Association of Futures). She worked as a curator at the Historical Hawken House Museum in the United States, collaborating on the reformulation of the museum's permanent exhibition, entitled "Reconstruction and Industrialization: The Gilded Age in Saint Louis," and curated the exhibition "Historic Hawken House: A Review of the Past, A Look Into the Future," dedicated to the institution's 50th anniversary. Her research explores the relationship between psychoanalysis and art, drawing on her clinical practice and its intersections with aesthetics, critical theory, gender, and feminism.

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Students, teachers and retirees have a 10% discount
Doubts:
cursos@mam.org.br
WhatsApp: Phone: 11 99774 3987

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photo: Natali Tubenchlak, It has been like this since I was a little girl, waiting for the encounter. Photo: Mario Grisolli