L’originale, l’ombra e la ripetizione (The original, the shadow and the repetition)

This work is part of a collective exhibition Not Giving a Hoot curated by Vítor Nieves.

L’originale, l’ombra e la ripetizione (The original, the shadow and the repetition)

“As the shadow grows taller, so does the gap between the original and the copy”

On a November evening of 1985 whilst riding his bike home, Francesco, the middle son of my maternal grandparents, was hit by a car and died instantly. He was 31, and I was about 10 months old. Growing up with my grandparents, I rarely heard them talking about him or what had happened.

I’ve always assumed the taboo was the death of a young son. A few years ago, after the death of my grandparents, I found a journal written by my grandfather about Francesco that opened up a more complex reality. The journal was a rather detailed report of what turned out to be the last two years of my uncle’s life and acute period of his mental illness and depression.

Schizophrenia affects 1 in 300 people worldwide. Although not a “new” condition, it is considered the psychosis of modern times. Swiss psychiatrist E. Bleuler coined the term more than a century ago, a compound of ancient Greek skhizein ‘to split’ + phrēn ‘mind’, on the conviction that the most important sign of this condition is “the splitting of different psychological functions, resulting in a loss of unity of the personality”.

In a world that is still trying to understand the causes and modalities of schizophrenia, which is thought now as a container for different pathologies, what does it mean to find oneself incapable of functioning in the societal and familial context? Is there a line between before and after? Between psychosis and so called normality?

Beyond the personal connection to this family secret, the journey of a young man experiencing the onset of schizophrenia seems to provide a wider perspective on sanity, mental illness and all the spaces in between; a metaphor of the constant struggle of the individual to form and reform their own identity, and cohabit with the other, and a world that can appear indecipherable.

Biblioteca Lúcio Craveiro da Silva
R. de São Paulo 1, 4700-042 Braga

Opening Hours:

Monday – Friday
09:30–19:30

Saturday
09:30–12:30/14:00–18:00

Sunday
Closed