Shadow People

Within the Italian asylums in the 1970s, forced limits, authoritarianism and violence mark the rhythm of the life of the hospitalizations in a process of dehumanization.

Freedom is what the patient has been deprived of but at the same time it is also the only element that can push him to search for himself, for his own lost individuality. Freedom is not something that can be received as a gift, it is only the fruit of a personal achievement. Confidence in oneself, in man, in the society that denied it only because it was weak. The furtively and skeptical patient tries the first steps outside the enclosure, the first attempts at a personal approach. It is a solitary search for one's personal ability to regain an individual dimension. The mental limit is also recognized in the choice of clothing which, although it tries to reconnect with society, brings back references to the moments in which it was inside the hospitalization facility. The laces recall methods of treatment used by doctors, as well as being a symbol of compulsion and alienation from the rest of the community. Narrower elements, such as bands and tight areas as opposed to larger volumes that refer to the attempt to free oneself, although this will never happen definitively. Hinges and oblique cuts are evidence of a mind that still struggles to be in harmony with symmetry and common order. The dominant colors are dark, dull and mysterious, referring to a past of anxiety, isolation and anguish; these dark prevalences are broken up by thin spaces of petrol green, indicating a hope of recovery of which the subject is not fully aware because he is still trapped by the experiences he has lived.

The accessories are characterized by rough textures and undefined, intricate and tangled shapes: they are the mirror of the complicated flow of thoughts from which the subject cannot free himself, detach himself from them. So also the bags are in close contact with his body, they are its continuation.