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ART AND FRIENDSHIP: A CARE SHARING PROJECT

Giulia and I are the best friends ever. We met in 2006 at the Art Academy in Bologna, Italy and since then we've shared every single experience. We are talented artists based in Italy and Berlin.

Unfortunately, in 2014 we shared a similar experience of abuse caused by our partners at that time.

Talking about violence is not easy at all, firstly because it is difficult to realize that you are being abused. You feel guilty. Secondly because you are scared to state your condition as the victim. You feel as though you are wrong or perhaps as though you are just overreacting about "normal" misunderstandings that come up in every relationship. Psychological and physical abuse is really common but it is hard to depict it. Little by little we started to analyze our situation through an intense e-mail exchange and it came out how easy it was to use another language to express this disease: the language of fairytales.

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A PROCESS TO MERGE FANTASY AND STRENGTH

To enforce the process of understanding what we were living we also started to illustrate these tales. I was drawing Giulia's stories and she was illustrating mine.

In this way, we confronted our situations deeply and we realized what was wrong. As in the fairytales we end up with a happy ending, leaving these relationships behind us forever.

We are neither psychologists nor therapists however we deeply want to publish this book as an evidence of a victory over negative situations. We also realized that it was possible to share this healing process with an audience using art that merges fantasy and commitment.

THE FIRST STEP TOWARDS A BROADER SOCIAL ENGAGED ART PROJECT

This would be the first step towards a broader project!

Publishing this book will not just share a positive way of looking at domestic violence but it will also encourage other people to do the same. This is a unique artistic project, realized in an entirely do-it

yourself style. Besides the descriptions of all our emotions, this is the proof that it is possible to heal oneself through art and not only to heal, but to transform fear into strength.

We created an animation with a really special soundtrack. We want to involve as many people as possible in this project which will also include free workshops and the creation of a unique app for smartphones. The aim is to create a real network of people that are sharing their personal experiences of abuse with others, crafting them into illustrated fairytales hopefully with a happy ending. This is just the beginning of a great project to support everyone who is living in difficult situations of emotional abuse.

SO LET'S GROW OUR WINGS TOGETHER!

LITTLE EXCERPT FROM THE ANIMATED VIDEO

I can grow wings