Chimere is a multidisciplinary project that reopens the pages of mental-health history and collective memory, using the legacy of Arezzo’s former Neuropsychiatric Hospital to explore what regeneration — historical, territorial, and emotional — can look like today.
Chimere unfolds across three interconnected touchpoints: a research-driven publication, a deck of emotional-conversation cards, and a future site-specific installation — each illuminating a different facet of the project’s relationship with the former Neuropsychiatric Hospital of Arezzo.
The project develops along two parallel paths that will eventually find their place within the installation. The publication retraces the evolution of mental-health care in Italy — from the rise of asylums to Basaglia’s reform — before focusing on the story of Arezzo and the vision that inspired Chimere. In dialogue with it, the deck of cards invites intimate, meaningful conversations: a participatory gesture meant to be experienced within the park and spaces of the former hospital, offering a space for emotional expression once denied to its patients.
Chimere’s visual identity is entirely blue for both symbolic and contextual reasons. Historically, blue has been used to represent mental illness — from The Ship of Fools to Marco Cavallo, the blue papier-mâché horse created in Trieste’s Neuropsychiatric Hospital as a symbol of patients’ suppressed desires and humanity. In visual arts, it often evokes darkness and melancholy, aligning with the project’s themes of confinement and emotional struggle. Blue also invites reflection and emotional openness, which is why it was adopted as a unifying, intentional choice across all Chimere’s outputs.
Collaborators: Sara Iaccino, Irene Tarateta
[I led the project as Project Manager]
[I led the project as Project Manager]
