Continuing the path begun in the previous three editions, the Women’s Biennial once again sets itself the task of identifying and exploring issues related to sociocultural, identity, behavioral and geopolitical problems, interpreted through the sharp creativity of some of the best-known female voices in contemporary art.

Curated by Lola Bonora and Silvia Cirelli, the exhibition features the work of seven artists who are already established internationally and whose research has long focused on the theme of violence, an issue that is unfortunately still very relevant today. VALIE EXPORT, Regina José Galindo, Loredana Longo, Naiza H. Khan, Yoko Ono, Lydia Schouten and Nancy Spero recount realities and experiences that are extremely different from each other, investigating the practice of violence in its broadest and most disparate meanings: from individual to family, from cultural to political to social.

With no limitations of gender or identity, the exhibition reveals sometimes shouted and sometimes stifled confrontations, presented with a multiplicity of expressive languages from sculpture to photography, from drawing to video art, as well as an installation made especially for the Biennale.

Welcoming the viewer is the exciting army of Pakistani Naiza H. Khan: life-size sculptures that hang from the ceiling and seem to advance with menacing lightness. They are unusual suits of armor, some of which take up the most common female lingerie in their fabrics and shapes, transformed now into cold armor at once intimate and dramatic, protecting but above all constricting and oppressing. In this series of sculptures, as well as in the photographs inspired by it, the artist exalts the paradoxes of Pakistani society, breaking down the usual barriers of the female universe and revealing the ambivalence of the physical and spiritual constraints of women in her country. The exhibition continues with the contribution of Yoko Ono, a Japanese naturalized U.S. artist who has for years been devoted to recurring themes such as peace, human rights and violence, as evidenced by the two videos belonging to the well-known and controversial work Cut Piece, which capture a performance of hers first in New York and then in Paris. Motionless and kneeling on the stage, Yoko Ono invites the audience to cut her dress into pieces, until she is left virtually naked. The human body then gives way to cold concrete in Sicilian Loredana Longo’s site-specific installation, where a simple floor is transformed into a dramatic cemetery of clothes, forgotten and abandoned. Always attentive to highly topical issues, once again Longo astonishes with an artistic research rooted in the news and more specifically in the delicate issue of deaths at work and women’s emancipation, taking her cue from the terrible fire in a shirt factory in New York on March 25, 1911, where 146 women lost their lives (as many as the number of tiles that make up the floor of the work). The shirts are imprisoned in the depleted concrete, constantly trampled and violated by visitors, who, as unwitting “executioners,” in turn emphasize the precariousness of the scene.

Of astonishing expressive force is the work by VALIE EXPORT, one of the leading exponents of that art of the late 1960s that tenaciously broke rigid stereotypes about the social and sexual function of women. Kalashnikov, this is the title of the monumental installation, is a tower more than three meters high built with 105 rifles that, reflecting in the spent oil at the base of the sculpture, clearly refer to bloody wars driven by economic interests, primarily oil. Flanking the installation are two dramatic videos showing cruel images of the war in Iraq and of executions in China. Equally provocative are the works of Guatemalan artist Regina José Galindo, already well known for extreme actions and performances that denounce the difficult reality of her country, where violence against the weakest is not only increasing but often goes tragically unpunished. The artist is distinguished by an emotional charge and creative impetuosity that identify her as one of the most committed contemporary voices of protest.

The exhibition then continues with a video installation by Dutch artist Lydia Schouten, focusing on the artist’s experience in New York City during a several-month residency in the late 1980s. Impressed by the constant violence and criminality that invaded the streets of the American metropolis, Lydia Schouten created a complex work that takes its cue from the daily news, reporting on reports of assaults, murders and crimes that actually happened during her stay. The gloomy and surreal atmosphere, exacerbated by the turquoise light that pervades the environment and the density of photographs, videos and objects that make up the installation, accentuate the perception of anguish that the artist wanted to recreate, making the viewer relive that same state of anxiety and disquiet felt by the victims of the crimes recounted. Closing the review is the eccentric flair of American Nancy Spero, an artist of rare talent who passed away a few years ago, who brings her own experience to the exhibition with a selection of drawings and an edgy installation exhibited for the first time in Italy. Emerging in the art scene of the 1960s for her courageous intellectual choice to deal with the struggle against political violence and male sexist dominance, the radical and feminist Nancy Spero was an important spokesperson for a pro-women’s rights and pacifist campaign that still celebrates her today as one of the leading and fundamental exponents.

Edited by.

Lola Bonora and Silvia Cirelli

Organizers

UDI’s Women’s Biennial Committee (composed of Lola G. Bonora, Silvia Cirelli, Ada Patrizia Fiorillo, Catalina Golban, Elisa Leonini, Anna Quarzi, Ansalda Siroli, Dida Spano, Liviana Zagagnoni) and Gallerie d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Ferrara, with the support of the Municipality of Ferrara, the Province of Ferrara and the Emilia-Romagna Region.