In life we meet many masks and few faces, as the playwright Luigi Pirandello teaches us. However, there are events in which the character finds his true identity thanks to the masks themselves. This is the case with many Super heroes, fictional characters who with a disguise can realize what openly they could not. There mask always tells the story of the hero and the motivations that push him. In this case, however, we are not talking about a fictional character, but a person in flesh and blood.
Vilma Dule is a woman of Albanian origin who in 2013, at the age of only 26, was the victim of one of the most tragic and inexplicable episodes imaginable: attacked by a stranger with acid, was scarred in the face, wounded in body and soul. After years of treatments, operations, therapies, he decided to tell about his experience, lived between Albania, France and Italy, to show how, even after such a horrible experience, one can not only move forward, but also leave something as a legacy to the next. To do this she created a art project entitled “Person”which tells of his incredible life after that episode.
The aggression against identity
“Acid is a form of aggression against identity – explains Vilma -. Those who use it want to harm your soul. This was the first spark that made me understand my new direction. The question you ask yourself all the time is whether it is possible to return as you were prima. At some point, however, you realize that if you focus only on the outward appearance, the person who hit you has already won. Before the physical are i damage of the soul to have to be taken care of. If you don’t heal inside you can’t heal outside ”. Dule, who graduated in Law in Tirana, suffered an attack whose principals were never convicted. The hypothesis reported by the victim is that it was mobbing: work colleagues who, envious of her professional success, have decided to punish her. From there the painful decision, to leave everything: family, home, city, one’s country. “After what happened, I told myself that I would never look back. Tirana it is my city, but it could no longer give me security. I studied law, I dedicated myself to justice, but my attackers have never been investigated. I returned to Albania, but the police told me in August 2014 that I was lucky to be alive. I told myself I shouldn’t be afraid ”.
The new challenge in Italy and surgical treatments
Vilma moved to Italia, in Milan, thanks to the support of some relatives. The first goal for her was to try to pick up the pieces of what her acid had tried to destroy. Her hospitals, in her country, could not provide for her specific needs and here she started a path of care.
“When I was released from the hospital I thought I was going to be as new as a flower, but then I realized that the real challenge it started from there. The post-surgical treatments began: the scars were so inflamed that I had to wait before being able to do other operations. To prevent them from becoming too hypertrophic, the doctors used girdles and compression bands. You have to prepare the skin for operations aesthetic. I started in Milan, then life took me to France. There I discovered a girl who was talking about treatments with filiform showers that aimed to reduce the burn. Nobody imagines it but in reality the scars also lead to functional problems: they itch, those around the mouth prevent you from eating “.
The hospital stay was a calvary almost a year long, during which however Vilma had the opportunity to reflect a lot on his condition: “I met my surgeon in France, in Lyon, in 2015. She asked me what I wanted to get from the operation. I asked her to return me to the way I was before her, but she replied that it was not possible. So we decided to do what was in our power because my appearance didn’t just communicate what had happened to me. I came to masks through therapy. In 2014 I did the first mask of silicone in Milan. The technician wanted to throw it away and I asked to be able to preserve it. I had lost everything and it was as if at that moment there was the only thing left to me. This was the first step of the Persona project ”.
The “Persona” project: decorating the plaster casts of the masks
Person is an idea of rebirth, a need for redemption, the desire to rebuild what has been shattered, to recover when everything has been lost. Technically, it consists precisely in the decorate the compression masks: “All that was happening to me was the formation of a new person. Then when I went to France I lived in a rehabilitation center. There you have everything, the course of surgery, massages and custom-made masks. I lived like this for three years. Always there I began to paint the chalks. When I saw the abandoned masks I had the same protective instinct that I felt in front of mine. I am a great lover of photography, but at that moment I wanted to express myself through painting and so I decorated them. When the doctor saw what I was doing, he said to me ‘In 35 years of work, I’ve never seen anyone do it’. He asked me to create a project and gods were born from there workshop. Pirandello attributed an identity to the mask: sometimes it is a mask that we wear and sometimes it is others who put it on us. For me it was a friend-enemy. She helped me, but I no longer felt recognized ”.
You never stop being “the victims of abuse”
A big problem with all people who are affected by violence is that that event independent of the will characterizes their life and life perception that project onto others forever. It doesn’t stop never really to be “victims of abuse“. Vilma didn’t want to get stuck in this definition and she decided that she could use her experience of hers to tell more: “I haven’t had much luck. I always had to work even when I was being treated. I walked around the streets of Lodi and people watched me while I was wearing the mask. Once on the subway, a guy told me ‘Look, it’s not Halloween‘- says the artist laughing -. I didn’t want people to just remember me as a victim or as that disguised one. Once it becomes the object of an attack, it remains so forever. We talk about this from the outside, the victim himself never has a voice. From my desperation she was born my strength: my life was very good before and I didn’t want to give up. When I made the project I created the motto ‘behind every mask there is a person‘, so I began to meet others like me, and empathy made me heal ”.
“Behind every mask there is a person”
Persona was the protagonist of various meetings and exhibitions in France and Italy, but the artistic aspect is not the most relevant or at least it is not the only one. For Vilma, the only world to prevent what happened to her from happening again, and by administering to others the drug that cured her: l’empathy. “Person is currently a mobile project. The first exhibition was in Lyon in 2018. I carry it around depending on the context. I started a project of awareness raising with schools. I tell them about my experience with art therapy and I am very surprised because the guys are really attentive and sensitive. They have more desire to express themselves than we might think. In Italy I exhibited only once, in Lodi in 2021, but it was I who insisted on meeting with the schools. Talking to students is priceless and is the key to educating in a culture of empathy where hurting others is not the solution ”.