In the Institute of Social Care for Clients with Mental Disabilities and Associated Combined Defects in Křižanov, I was inspired some time ago to write a subjective visual statement with an effort to convey the local atmosphere into several small chapters. A chapter written in a documentary manuscript about people who are hidden under the “mask” of mental disability and have their “natural world” in which they move, live, work and create.

The initial prejudices and barriers gradually melt away and the unique, unrepeatable and enriching qualities of those who learn things more slowly and find it harder to navigate even in their immediate surroundings are revealed to me. I recognize their joys, worries, dreams and hopes – the same as in the world of people without disabilities. I had the opportunity to get to know their strengths and weaknesses and was able to understand why they are an inspiration, a role model or the meaning of life for us.

A person with a physical disability is offered a crutch or a wheelchair to help, a person with a mental disability we offer ourselves, our reason and abilities. This is how I perceived it with all the employees of this home, who, thanks to the personal relationship and the resulting empathy, enable the maximum search for mental balance and health in disabled people. This happens in areas ranging from health care to all educational activities, which are guided by the principles of special pedagogy with a focus on mental, sensory, aesthetic, musical, physical, work and perhaps art education, or other types of art in the form of therapies. The directions that are the adventure, the goals are in the fog and often, as if their meanings also disappear, because the real meaning of these anabasis is the development of human creativity, inner motivation, imagination and imagination.

All the production and work of disabled people was so specific and autonomous for me that it brought me interesting experiences and powerful experiences from the moment I became their recipient and consumer.

And so I have often observed here that the use of a special way of seeing the world of disabled people, their peculiarities, perception and motor skills is often a journey into the unknown, to which, for example, professional artists strive all their creative time – to the ability to capture life in an original and new way. An example is the combination of things that are essentially unconnected, thus giving room for the creation of a unique atmosphere.