Within the framework of the event "Culture for Social Welfare" organized by the City of Lecco, in collaboration with the Mental Health Department ASST Lecco, the Mental Health Forum of Lecco, and the association “I fiori di oltre il giardino” APS, following the great success achieved in 2018 at the Broletto in Como and subsequently in various other locations, Lecco will also host the photo exhibition: “Erased Women”.

The exhibition is curated by the association “I fiori di oltre il giardino APS” and realized by the photographer Gin Angri, through a research and analysis of the material contained in the archive of over 42,000 medical records from the former San Martino asylum in Como, which presents the faces and stories of the women hospitalized in this place where they spent their lives or part of it between 1882 and 1948.

The boundary between normality and madness. A secret, never revealed by Italian asylums, finally closed by the Basaglia reform, hidden in dusty archives, along with the painful reality of too many women confined just because they were precocious or intelligent, sensual (“moral madness”), rebellious, not submissive, not fond of domestic activities, or victims of family and societal violence. Many minds erased, 'treated' with isolation from reality and deprivation of identity, subjected to harassment, control of autonomy, denial of human relationships with the outside world, stripping of identity, often victims of physical constraints and violence.

Daughters, mothers, sisters, fiancées, and wives, poor dancers, spinsters unwanted by any relative, illiterate, mentally unstable, and "miserable". Gazes lost in emptiness, defenseless postures, inconsolable cries, and faces that defy beauty and modesty emerge from bulging folders of old photographs, handwritten notes, with love requests never sent, never received, simply enclosed in medical records. All hospitalized at San Martino from 1882 to 1948, the years covered by the photographic research, marked by the stigma of deviance, annihilated by electroshock, insulin therapy, or malaria therapy, lack of freedom, and violence.

A historical and human heritage, transferred from Como to an anonymous warehouse in Lodi, along with the stories of its Erased Women. Real stories, hopefully returning, along with the entire archive, to the pavilions of San Martino, on the hills of Como.