There's a moment when violence stops being a private matter and becomes a public act. A necessary act. It's the moment when a 21-year-old girl, petite, with hazel eyes and a shy but firm voice, decides to bring to light what has suffocated her for months in the darkness of the screen: words that strike like knives, that haunt you even when the phone is off, that try to convince you that you're worthless, that you shouldn't exist. Words that want you dead.
Elisa Siciliano, a student at the IED in Cagliari, has chosen to stop being the victim and instead become the speaker. Because—she insists—"we are all potential targets." And silence is the most fertile ground for those who operate behind a nickname.
It all started in April. "The first messages were on Easter Sunday," she says. A painful detail: the celebration, family at the table, and meanwhile, on the phone, the first scratch. Threatening messages. Disjointed. Sick. A profile that might be fake, maybe not: it's the uncertainty, even more than the words, that digs in.
"They were referring to my body. This person wanted to see me dead, he wanted me to end it all." Elisa, however, immediately understands the gravity of the situation. She blocks the account, but it's not enough. In fact, it's just the beginning.
"When I blocked that account, the messages started appearing on another one. They arrived constantly, day and night, always from different accounts." A constant, invisible, surgical, tireless persecution.
The words on the 21-year-old's profile hit like thorns: "Words that hurt, words that haunt, words that become an unbearable burden," she says today, with a thread of voice but impressive clarity.
And then, the phrase that remains engraved in her memory: "Move to death, I want to 'commit obscene acts' on your tombstone."
It's the first of its kind. Not the worst, perhaps, but the clearest, the most revealing. "At first I thought it was a joke, then I saw how it continued. I realized it wasn't a joke, and if it was, it was in terrible taste." Incessant requests to commit suicide: grab a rope, end it all. Every day. Every night.
Elisa speaks with her family, friends, and teachers, whom she thanks. She doesn't report it: "I was very fragile. I didn't feel like taking legal action, and even today I'm not ready." Indeed, psychological abuse has a subtle effect: it makes you doubt your ability to react.
For two months, Elisa has lived in a constant state of alarm. The photos posted on social media today seem absurd to her: shots where she appears carefree, like a girl experiencing the spring of her twenties.
"But I was full of fear. I posted photos to show I was calm, even though I was dying inside."
Then the drastic decision: disappear. Changes accounts. Loses contacts. Rebuilds everything from scratch. In June, freedom is possible. "Before, I was afraid he might find me even outside my home, but now no, I'm not afraid anymore. I've made an internal journey... this new rebirth."
And it's here that her story changes direction. Not toward the end, but toward the beginning. Elisa brings that wound to the forefront in her exhibition "This Unbearable Lightness," which opens today, November 25, at the Teatro Massimo in Cagliari. A date that isn't neutral: the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Ten shots. Ten everyday settings. Ten genuinely heartfelt phrases.
Phrases no woman should read. Phrases printed, enlarged, impossible to ignore. "I'm not asking for pity," she explains, "these images are my response. A revenge."
His fortune, says his teacher, Giacomo Pisano, is having a means of expression: the language of images, photography as catharsis. Not to erase fear, disgust, or loneliness, but to transform them.
Elisa says it with disarming simplicity: "If not me, next time it will be someone else. Perhaps those who experience what I experienced, seeing the exhibition, will understand that there is a way to be reborn, to live without fear." And this, perhaps, is the heart of her story: not just the violence, but the choice not to let it define who she is.