Javier Téllez wrote this text in 1996 to accompany his installation La extracción de la piedra de la locura [The Extraction of the Stone of Madness] on exhibit at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas. Téllez, like Theodor W. Adorno before him, points out the phonetic similarity between the words “museum” and “mausoleum.” He enumerates the possible affinities between the two institutions in terms of architecture (immaculate white rooms with neutral lighting; halls down which people wander in silence), as well as techniques and terminology. In other words, both museums and mental institutions are organized around taxonomies and make use of the terms “cure” and “curator.” Téllez explains the ironic nature of a work where a “madhouse” is installed in a “temple of reason.” For the installation, he makes use of museological strategies such as selection, collecting, simulation, and an archeological vision. In closing, Téllez explains that all of the objects in this show were taken from the Hospital Psiquiátrico de Bárbula in the state of Carabobo. As such, the work formulates a critique of concepts like “originality” and “uniqueness” in the work of art.

This text by Javier Téllez (b. 1968) was written to complement the conceptual proposal underlying his installation La extracción de la piedra de la locura [The Extraction of the Stone of Madness] presented at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas in 1996. A Venezuelan contemporary artist, Téllez has boldly addressed and delved into “madness” as social and cultural problem. He has explained on a number of occasions that his interest, even as a youth, in mental illness as a form of social marginalization is due to the fact that his parents were psychiatrists.

Here, the topic of madness is addressed in relation to the concept of the “museum.” Specifically, Téllez reflects on “institutionality” and, in those terms, he draws analogies between the psychiatric hospital and the museum. Téllez asserts that the psychiatric hospital is the most fitting specular image of the museum due to the “necrological connotations of the paradigmatic institution for the preservation of cultural heritage.” In his view, both spaces are a symbolic representation of authority, order, and discipline. The artist explains that the work intends to perform an act of appropriation by transporting the seclusion room of a mental hospital—the space of marginality par excellence—to the exhibition gallery. As such, the work entails the “deconstruction of the relationship between the object and its presentation.”

Téllez explains the meaning of the objects taken from the Hospital Psiquiátrico de Bárbula and of the viewer’s participation in a “flexible architecture” conducive to human relations and to active viewer participation in a specific art space.