“
“I forgive you,
Not because nothing happened, Not because it did not hurt,
But because I came to understand it was never one person's fault.
It was a collective fault.
A collective failure.
A cultural problem.
A collective silence.
I expect change, I don’t beg it.
I divulge. Because divulgation is inevitable, if we are to evolve.
Do you know anything about shame?
Do you know what it means to change yourself, to survive?
To walk a certain way.
To talk a certain way.
To lower your voice.
To dress down.
To make yourself smaller, even though you could shine.
To abuse alcohol, to stop feeling judged and seen.
To constantly listen to loud music, to not hear people insulting you.
I had to disappear.
I had to physically suppress who I am, to survive mentally.
Our differences are our greatest strength. Without mine, I could not see the world the way I do. I would not be myself without them. What makes us, is what sets us apart.
Through your exclusion, I learned acceptance.
Let us accept our differences. Let us embrace them. Let us learn from them. I only wanted to live, to be myself, but you hurt me, again and again. You wanted me normal. You wanted me obedient. You forced me to make myself smaller, until there was nothing left to hate. So I left, to be myself.
Now you see me here, proud and strong. But remember, I am only a visitor now. I leave whenever I want. I no longer have to obey to your degrading unwritten rules. I want everyone to be whoever they are, without ever having to leave or change anymore. If I had stayed here, I doubt I would have found the courage to become who I am today. In love, and in tears of remembrance, for everything I became, my-true-self.
Because there is nothing more righteous than being your true self, every day. This is not about me. This is about everyone, who thinks, who behaves, who acts, who speaks, differently. I want everyone accepted. Not merely tolerated. Accepted. Everyone, the deviants, the sodomites, the eccentrics, the perverts, the sluts, the weirdos, everyone different.
Except those who would deny others that same right. That is not a contradiction. That is the line where acceptance protects itself. I forgive you, But I don't forget.”
(+) The choreography of not being noticed.
This is my story. But it is also the story of many others.
The story of a gay man. The story of anyone different. The story of many others who understood very early that adaptation was not a choice, but a condition of survival.
People who had to adapt to unwritten social expectations, against their will. Who changed their voices, their behavior, the way they walked, the way they dressed, the amount of space they allowed themselves to occupy.
They learned the choreography of not being noticed.
I was fortunate enough to have the means to leave. I could move abroad, to a big city. I could enter another social environment and test what remained of me when the mechanisms of adaptation were no longer necessary.
I discovered that I had not disappeared.
I had simply become very good at hiding.
But I wanted to become myself.
Abroad, I could reconstruct myself. I could become visible again. I could become my-true-self.
But it is impossible to fight against a system like this if you are alone. You need support.
And this is where the story becomes political.
Because leaving is a privilege.
Not everybody can leave the place that hurts them. Not everybody has the means, the passport, the family circumstances, the education, the opportunity, or simply the possibility to disappear and begin again from scratch somewhere else.
So what happens to the people who stay?
What happens to the child who cannot leave?
What happens to the person who spends their entire life adapting to an environment that considers their existence a problem?
I don't think the answer should always be: leave.
The environment has to change.
Because it is toxic.
I want Italy to evolve.
Not to return to some imagined version of itself, but to become contemporary. To accept that the country already contains people whose lives, bodies, families, desires and identities do not correspond to the fantasy of a homogeneous society.
I have no interest in nostalgia. It disgusts me.
Stop romanticizing the past. Start imagining a future worth romanticizing.
I don't accept politicians who turn difference into a threat, or who construct an idea of the nation through exclusion.
I am afraid of what happens when a society decides that some people are more legitimate than others.
And I am afraid of what happens when we allow that decision to become normal.
Because these decisions are not abstract.
They enter schools.
They enter families.
They enter workplaces.
They enter everything.
I was able to leave. To see that there is more.
Others cannot.
Therefore, this is not simply my personal story anymore.
It concerns anyone who has been told that their existence is excessive, inappropriate, foreign, immoral, unnatural, inconvenient.
Minorities. Women. Queer people. Immigrants. Trans people. Anyone who does not fit comfortably inside the image of the heterosexual white man as the unquestioned centre of society.
And to be clear: I absolutely do not hate heterosexual white men.
I have no interest in replacing one hierarchy with another.
I am interested in dismantling the idea that there should be a hierarchy in the first place.
I accept difference.
I defend difference.
I even defend the right of people to be different from me.
But I do not accept the politics of denying that same right to somebody else.
That is not a contradiction.
That is the line where acceptance protects itself.
ARTIST'S NOTE
Ideally, this story should not be something new for you.It should feel outdated.
But it does not, because many of you still have no idea about it.
And that is precisely why I will continue to tell it.
Divulgation is vital.
PRESS STATEMENT
[ GLASS ] CLOSET THE PERFORMANCE (+) The choreography of not being noticed is a performance by Italian artist Matteo De Caminada, first presented at Fondazione Antonio Dalle Nogare in collaboration with Transart Festival of Contemporary Cultures in 2026.
The work begins as a personal account of shame, self-suppression and the necessity of leaving in order to survive, before expanding into a political reflection on the social structures that make such disappearance necessary. Through the relationship between visibility and concealment, De Caminada examines how cultural expectations become internalised and embodied: in the voice, the body, behaviour, and the amount of space one allows oneself to occupy.
The addition “The choreography of not being noticed” shifts the work from individual testimony toward collective responsibility. If leaving is a privilege, what happens to those who cannot leave? The work asks whether acceptance can remain meaningful when it is conditional, and where the boundary lies between accepting difference and accepting the denial of difference.