Agoraphobia is excessive and persistent fear of open and / or crowded spaces, which can provoke a constant attempt to avoid places and situations that expose to an intense state of anxiety and, as a consequence, pushes to self-confinement at home, identified as the only safe place.
The presented serie tries to represent the reality of someone who suffer this fear. Contrary to what one might think, the house itself is not a prison, but rather a calm, warm and light-filled space, a cozy and pleasant place that gives peacefulness; the outside world, lived from behind a window, is incomprehensible, mainly unknown, sometimes threatening, distorted.
In the interior the exterior is present, and the separation/connection between the two environment is the human presence itself.
The separation between the two worlds, interior and exterior, vanishes into repetitiveness which characterises both: a life in a few square meters made by rituals and routines and, at the same time, everything that is visible from a window, distant, opaque, monotonous.
The lobbies of the buildings in my neighbourhood are tangible and often invisible testimonies of a near time which no longer exists.
We see the marks of a constructive craving, a need to respond to the obligation to welcome more and more people in a booming city that has no time to diversify. There is the smell of the wood that covers the walls, the cold of the marble of the stairs, the iron inserts in the tables, the handrails and lamps, the cold and dry lights, the mirrors that create deceit on the real dimensions, the indoor plants, signs of wear on the sofas. Environments that seem to have been designed to accommodate, but maintain a stately harshness that invites distance.
The entrance to a condominium is a sort of non-place, a no-man's-land: even though it belongs to someone, it’s not lived by anyone, it’s a mere place of passage. When it houses an austere small room, or a simple desk with a chair, the doorman does not own the place, but feels it like a bit his own. The feeling of belonging and ownership extends from the sober cubicle to the adjacent space, becoming the other object of his care.
The doorman is an integral part of the lobby, it reminds us of a social separation that we tend to consider outdated, but which, as in its traces, is often still present.
