The exhibition consists of 57 works by mentally handicapped artists from the U.S., England, Spain, Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay.  The work selection was done by Juan Martin, an outsider art expert and executive director of NAEMI. NAEMI is an international organization dedicated to discovering, promoting and exhibiting work by artists with mental illness.
Many of the exhibiting artists are self-taught and they transmit a personal and intense vision of art.  With initiatives such as these, the NAEMI Foundation is looking to educate the public regarding art produced by persons who have or have had mental problems.  

As Lyle Rexer, author of the book "How to Look at Outsider Art", elucidate:  “Outsider art, those pieces that resist entering into that invisibility by provokingly producing a confusion in our conceptual categories, may act as an incentive for our esthetic conscience.  Look again! It seems to say: Look directly and do not take anything for granted.

National Art Exhibition by the Mentally Ill (NAEMI) is a Florida non profit organization which has given art access to mentally ill persons that would have otherwise remained isolated from the contemporary cultural tendency.  NAEMI’s objective is discovering, studying, promoting, exposing and also the conservation of this type of art nationwide. With this type of initiative NAEMI is trying to educate the community on outsider art, help eradicate prejudice against mental illnesses and reaffirming the creative capacity of mentally ill patients.

MCPA Gallery/North Annex of Borders
(Miami Center for the Photographic Arts)
1601 S.W. 1st St.
Miami, Fl. 33135
May 1 - 30
Gallery hours: Monday – Friday 9 - 6
Saturday 10 - 5
305 649 0324 (gallery)
954 922 8692 (NAEMI)
Naemi@bellsouth.net