Nomadic Subject: Female identity through the images of five Italian photographers, 1965-1985
Nomadic Subject brings together in an exhibition, for the first time, the images of five Italian women photographers, from the mid-1960s to the 1980s, to convey different perspectives on the experience, representation and interpretation of feminine subjectivity in a period of sweeping social change for Italy. Years of transition from radical political engagement to hedonism, years of terrorist violence but also of civil achievements, brought about mostly by women and the struggles of feminism.
A reflection on identity and its representation that takes its cue from the extraordinary portraits of the transvestites of Genoa by Lisetta Carmi (Genoa, 1924), where the feminine mystique is an aspiration, and interpreted in the images of actresses, writers and artists by Elisabetta Catalano (Rome, 1941-2015), the coverage of the feminist movement by Paola Agosti (Turin, 1947), the women and girls of mafia-torn Sicily by Letizia Battaglia (Palermo, 1935), and men who take on a female identity for a single day during the carnival of small towns in Campania, explored by Marialba Russo (Naples, 1947).
In Italy the full acceptance of female press photographers, art photographers and artists in the system of art and journalism began in the 1960s, in step with the socio-political changes and multiple demands brought about by feminism. Though belonging to different generations, all the photographers in the show have come to grips with the social transformations in progress in the Italian society, giving rise to very personal reflections on the image of women, and more specifically on feminine identity and its encroachments, the sense of otherness seen through a sensibility that has elaborated and absorbed the idea of difference.
In this period, the medium of photography became the tool par excellence with which to represent a new central role of women鈥檚 bodies and their transformations, personal experiences and family life, the relationship between private memory and collective history. The images in the exhibition share in the representation of a vast and unconventional female universe in the wider sense of the term, where the body is not just the object of an external, prevalently male gaze, but become an active subject, a vehicle with which to express other non-standardized, non-heterocentric values.
The feminine image is thus the central focus, an image that is amplified, revealed and deconstructed, becoming a vehicle of non-bourgeois values, but also a vivid representation of an inner life that is able to break free of stereotypes.
The exhibition presents over 100 images to document a period of about twenty years: it bears witness to the rise of new, multiple expressive urges, which though not constituting a 鈥渇eminine specificity鈥� offer a perspective of women on women and their identity.
The title of the exhibition refers to the ground-breaking anthology of essays by Rosi Braidotti Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory (Cambridge: Columbia University Press, 1994), in which the philosopher outlines a new sexual subjectivity that is multiple, multicultural and stratified, like the subjectivity represented in the images of the photographers included in this show.
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Nomadic Subject brings together in an exhibition, for the first time, the images of five Italian women photographers, from the mid-1960s to the 1980s, to convey different perspectives on the experience, representation and interpretation of feminine subjectivity in a period of sweeping social change for Italy. Years of transition from radical political engagement to hedonism, years of terrorist violence but also of civil achievements, brought about mostly by women and the struggles of feminism.
A reflection on identity and its representation that takes its cue from the extraordinary portraits of the transvestites of Genoa by Lisetta Carmi (Genoa, 1924), where the feminine mystique is an aspiration, and interpreted in the images of actresses, writers and artists by Elisabetta Catalano (Rome, 1941-2015), the coverage of the feminist movement by Paola Agosti (Turin, 1947), the women and girls of mafia-torn Sicily by Letizia Battaglia (Palermo, 1935), and men who take on a female identity for a single day during the carnival of small towns in Campania, explored by Marialba Russo (Naples, 1947).
In Italy the full acceptance of female press photographers, art photographers and artists in the system of art and journalism began in the 1960s, in step with the socio-political changes and multiple demands brought about by feminism. Though belonging to different generations, all the photographers in the show have come to grips with the social transformations in progress in the Italian society, giving rise to very personal reflections on the image of women, and more specifically on feminine identity and its encroachments, the sense of otherness seen through a sensibility that has elaborated and absorbed the idea of difference.
In this period, the medium of photography became the tool par excellence with which to represent a new central role of women鈥檚 bodies and their transformations, personal experiences and family life, the relationship between private memory and collective history. The images in the exhibition share in the representation of a vast and unconventional female universe in the wider sense of the term, where the body is not just the object of an external, prevalently male gaze, but become an active subject, a vehicle with which to express other non-standardized, non-heterocentric values.
The feminine image is thus the central focus, an image that is amplified, revealed and deconstructed, becoming a vehicle of non-bourgeois values, but also a vivid representation of an inner life that is able to break free of stereotypes.
The exhibition presents over 100 images to document a period of about twenty years: it bears witness to the rise of new, multiple expressive urges, which though not constituting a 鈥渇eminine specificity鈥� offer a perspective of women on women and their identity.
The title of the exhibition refers to the ground-breaking anthology of essays by Rosi Braidotti Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory (Cambridge: Columbia University Press, 1994), in which the philosopher outlines a new sexual subjectivity that is multiple, multicultural and stratified, like the subjectivity represented in the images of the photographers included in this show.
Artists on show
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The Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art presents two new episodes in the program of exhibitions for the winter, offering visitors multiple 鈥渇emale鈥� perspectives.
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