Abstract
This chapter explores collective feminist practices of resistance in aesthetics and signs of women’s autonomous artistic production within the Italian socio-political context of the 1970s. Starting from a brief analysis of the first published research on the presence of women in the field of artistic production in Italy, I will retrace the particular story of some feminist artists and intellectuals from Naples who decided to face both their own existential and professional condition by working together, forming the Gruppo XX and soon after the Gruppo Donne/Immagine/Creatività. This chapter aims to contribute to the broader academic interest in reassembling a genealogy of subjectivities that produced original cultural materials following unexplored trajectories whose experiences have been omitted for decades from the official narrative.
Translated from Italian by Sylvia Notini
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Notes
- 1.
Lucio Amelio (1931–1994) was a leading figure on the Neapolitan contemporary art scene. He opened his independent Modern Art Agency in Parco Margherita in 1965 and through it contributed to transforming the city into an important epicenter for art and art criticism. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Amelio supported public art projects and organized solo and group exhibitions which were pioneering for the affirmation of Arte Povera and later the Transavanguardia, fostering intense publishing and encouraging debate and research about American art and the role of artistic institutions.
- 2.
The Nemesiache group was founded by Lina Mangiacapre. Throughout the 1970s it brought together and welcomed women from different places in the Campania region, aimed at realizing creative political actions ranging from theater to cinema to performance. It focused on showing continuous research in various fields of art, especially in the production of videos. In 1976, Nemesiache organized in Naples L’Altro Sguardo, an international review of feminist cinema. For information on the group and on the experiences, it involved, see http://www.lenemesiache.it/ (accessed January 10, 2022) (Le Nemesiache official website, 2012).
- 3.
The event was held annually in S. Giuseppe Vesuviano from 1974 to 1983, representing an essential moment during which the Campania artists and local theater could try out new ideas and languages.
- 4.
Happenings were participatory events that included theatrical elements.
- 5.
The information concerning the events related to the exhibition’s opening are from unpublished interviews and conversations between the author and Sardella in October 2021.
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Ferrara, M.T. (2023). Reimagining Art Practice, Recasting Myths: The Story of Two Groups of Feminist Artists in Southern Italy in the Late 1970s. In: Hecker, S., Ramsey-Portolano, C. (eds) Female Cultural Production in Modern Italy. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14816-3_14
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