The World Within - PBF05 / Laure Vasconi
21 January - 27 March 2021
“Face to face with my son
Faced with his questions
The face of abstraction
Coronavirus: what is it?
My son, Leonard, who is 16 years old and has Down syndrome, is faced with numerous questions because he has to deal with this ‘unreal’ reality. Having free time at home with his parents was cool in the beginning. Little by little, he had to digest the total abstract notion of coronavirus. In order to answer the everyday questions facing him, he proposed a sort of parade of reactions to reveal what he was feeling and what he understood; so one photo a day has now become our way of expressing this feeling (…) Leonard has a trusting perception of the world. (…) His relationship with others, as well as time, space and danger, is more confused than that of most people. Every day he asks questions such as: Can we go to the cinema? Can we go to the swimming pool? (…) Our daily answers are helping him, little by little, as is his calendar, like a mirror of time (…). Our story, between our own four walls, has become our arrangement; and for Leonard, his own 'interior world'.”
