From 11 November to 3 December 2023 the exhibition “ ADELMO AND THE OTHERS will be exhibited in Torre Viscontea . Homosexuals confined in Lucania ”

The exhibition is part of the program of initiatives promoted by the Municipality of Lecco and the Lecco Urban Museum System for 2023/2024: this choice is integrated as a concrete awareness-raising action, even after the Municipality of Lecco joined the ReAdy Network, against discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation and gender identity . The exhibition, in collaboration with Agedo Como Lecco (Association of Parents, relatives and friends of LGBT people), Anpi Lecco (National Association of Partisans of Italy) and LGBT+ rights Renzo and Lucio, is curated by Cristoforo Magistro and was born from a project by Agedo Torino to deepen the reflection on the recognition of the universal rights of every human being and on the nature of fascism as a denial of such recognition. The Constitution of the Italian Republic will then prohibit any discrimination, specifying in article 3 that: "All citizens have equal social dignity and are equal before the law, without distinction of sex, race, language, religion, political opinions, personal and social conditions". As can be seen from the illustration of the contents, this theme is extremely topical where fascism no longer presents itself with the clearly recognizable uniform of a military dictatorship, but insinuates itself like a virus in democratic countries, denying the substantial equality of human beings , discriminating against minorities, propagating pseudoscientific information and artfully creating those divisions that only serve to increase fears, decreasing the spaces for participation of all in public life. The photo-documentary exhibition, made up of 31 panels, has already been presented in various cities, including Turin, Genoa, Padua, Bergamo, Bologna. It is an exhibition that tells about homosexual people sent into exile during the fascist period . It is in particular the story of the many confined for "pederasty" that attracts attention, because it tends to emblematically represent the essence of repression against homosexuals. Control and persecution, marginalization and discrimination are the essential aspects of the fascist attitude towards these "abnormals", so different from the virile fascist man. The exhibition therefore provides an important contribution to reconstructing the history of homosexuality in fascist Italy and , in particular, of the use of the instrument of " confinement ". Unlike actual criminal sanctions, confinement did not require judicially ascertained responsibility, but only conduct capable of producing a danger, considered as real, to public safety or political order. "Confinement" was not applied only to homosexuals but also politicians, anti-fascists, followers of Protestant churches and gypsies. Mussolini considered confinement a “very intelligent” way to carry out repression: speaking about it in the Chamber in May 1927 he declared “It's not terror, it's just rigor. And perhaps not even, it is social hygiene, national prophylaxis: these individuals are removed from circulation like a doctor removes an infected person from circulation." The exhibition, which seeks to reconstruct the events of some of these people, takes the name of Adelmo, the youngest of them, 19 years old. These are stories told in a didactic manner, inevitably partial, and reconstructed from the analysis of police papers and judicial documents.