from Giacomo Doni’s website
It all started in 2007.
It was a cool and sunny day in March when I crossed the entrance to the Imola mental hospital for the first time: the Osservanza.
A row of identical pavilions, a meticulous geometry of asylum architecture, as if the normalization of behavior passed through the spaces where the patients lived.
Identical pavilions, identical streets. Sky concrete earth. Sky concrete earth.
In the asylum you lost your identity and breathing that atmosphere you perceived exactly all this.
I remember those large, identical, alone, silent environments, just like that world frightened and threatened by those who lived beyond the walls of these hospitals. Cold and stiff: architecture capable of reflecting the stigma.
I remember that they introduced me to a photographer who was interested in mental health and the history of this imposing asylum.
I remember the chat and I remember the documentary he showed me before I returned home: Ward 14, the story of the doctor who freed the patients from the Imola mental hospital, Giorgio Antonucci.
“He started from the worst ward in the entire asylum…” he told me.
And I thought about what this department could be. I imagined angry male faces with unkempt beards screaming. I imagined adult figures that nurses struggled to contain.
Faces of men shining with sweat marked by wrinkles and confinement.
Nothing could be more wrong. The worst department of the asylum was not for men.
The worst department was Agitate Women.
“Antonucci thought of starting from that because it was the most difficult. If he had succeeded in freeing him, the others would have followed suit.” the photographer told me at the end of the documentary.
And I start imagining, every image I create scares me.
I imagine women who cannot be mothers, girls who cannot be wives, females who cannot be free. And I imagine the anger in their shouts.
Swollen veins on the neck to expel sounds of dissent, disappointment, anger.
Wide eyes, dilated pupils and hair on the face. Aesthetics of discomfort. Anatomical compositions of anger.
An annoying scene even for the simple imagination.
Women. Simple women who have never been in the spotlight of life, victims of sexism, protagonists of gender violence, invisible and silent people even for our imagination, which cannot find a space for them even “in the worst ward of the mental hospital”.
Women who have carried too heavy a weight on their shoulders.
I want to dedicate this post to all the female figures who lived in these spaces and who did something grandiose, revolutionary and indelible over time. Because the most complex burdens of life are always entrusted to the people who can bear them. And women are among the largest and most courageous figures capable of carrying these burdens.
The stories of the winners are written with the tears of the defeated and without them, there would be no winner. Without the women’s stories, the silent revolutions of the asylum would never have existed.
This will be a liquid post, which will be updated periodically with only women’s stories.
My little tribute to these wonderful creatures.