There’s a period in our life in which the response to the confrontation with the first complexities of the world translates into a path of self-investigation and growth. This period is adolescence, when boredom displaces the imaginary friend of childhood, manifests itself as all-encompassing and leads to the first confused inquiries and reflections on oneself. Boredom leads us to look inside ourselves, to face that inner emptiness that detaches us from reality and from the interaction with it. Construction of personal identity intensifies, through observations, escapes, impulses, interactions, relationships.

In “schiudersi” I develop this meditation, as a path in the diversity of sensations connected to the self-investigation inside: from the perception of inner emptiness, to the umbilical-narcissistic hiding of oneself, to the escape from oneself, to life as oscillation between boredom and pain, to holing up and cognitive shutdown by repetition, to the indecision between remaining a child or being a ring of the life chain, to the veiled consciousness.

The uncertain ending leaves room to the viewer: for the memory of one’s adolescence or for the reflection of one’s recent experience, or, maybe, for an identity yet to be defined: “Is there anybody out there? Is it me? Who will I be?”

Temporal setting is adolescence, location is an oxymoron: the garage of a condominium is a domestic “non-lieux”. The language is metaphorical-conceptual with a circular narrative. Through black and white, wide-angle and centrality of the composition, the subject is disconnected from reality, like a new Robinson Crusoe, lonely inhabitant of its own inner island...