Madness & Freedom
MADNESS
Passani returns repeatedly in his career to the subject of madness, madmen and mad women. Yet madness is not depicted as “self-destruction” but, paradoxically, as a desirable state of freedom unbounded by social norms. It is depicted not as a shameful condition but one of defiance towards conventional society.
Passani’s madmen and mad women are for the most part good-natured figures, living in a dimension of freedom where there is no judgment or condemnation.
Disjointed figures that drag behind the weariness of living, capable of laughing at those who are bound by static convention. The mad men and women have no inhibitions and live their parallel lives with the abandon of people who have nothing to prove; observing their surroundings from the strangest positions and seeming to laugh at every aspect related to the rules. Those charged with controlling, guarding, institutionalizing the mad take on the form of torturer, bad subjects, instilling in the observer a desire to defend and protect these individuals capable of living outside the rules.
Madness makes any action possible and Passani manages this multitude of characters as if it were its own decomposition. The artist is on their side, he knows how to perceive every single emotion and live their life as if it were his own. He exhibits no pity or commiseration, but a sincere feeling of complicity. The madman is the artist himself and the guard corresponds to the individual prohibitions that life imposes on each of us.