Lovay Gallery presents a solo exhibition of Suzanne Santoro’s historical works. The booth is built around one of her most significant series, the Mount of Venus (1971), a group of resin sculptures cast from her own body. On the wall, we show some of her iconic Black Mirrors (1972-1979), made from photographs taken by the artist, mounted on wood panels, and covered with resin and a polished mirror finish. Those thick and gloomy objects powerfully express the entire problematic of female representation in history: both overexploited and repressed. Santoro was interested in looking at the ways in which the female figure, and the sex in particular, had been hidden and stylized and therefore erased from representation. These early works embody Santoro’s life-long endeavor dedicated to the poetics and the politics of a female gaze on women.
Paris Internationale 10th Edition / 16-20 October 2024
For the Paris Internationale 2024, Lovay Fine Arts is proud to
present, for the first time, two series of works by the artist Suzanne
Santoro.
The showcased artwork, from “Blood Roses” and “Femaleness” series,created in the early 2000s, explore the theme of femininity and its symbolism throughout the history of Western art. Central to both series is the motif of the flower, an enduring symbol of the feminine.
Suzanne Santoro ha rielaborato, riadattandola agli spazi del Brooklyn Museum, un’installazione allestita nel 1976 a Roma presso la galleria Cooperativa del Beato Angelico, fondata e diretta da 11 artiste, scrittrici e critiche d’arte con l’obiettivo di promuovere il mondo e l’opera delle artiste.
I Thought Art Was for Women consiste in una carrellata di fotografie scattate da Santoro durante i suoi primi anni a Roma. L’opera è legata alla ricerca di fine anni ’60 sulle origini della pittura e della scultura occidentali attraverso una serie di immagini eterogenee, a partire da alcune macchie di colore trovate su sculture della Roma classica e interpretate come residui e testimonianze dello scorrere del tempo.
In linea con questo impegno, l’installazione di grandi dimensioni di Claire Fontaine per la sfilata Autunno 2024 Dior richiama i lavori di Suzanne Santoro e in particolare “Per una espressione nuova”. Claire Fontaine è un collettivo artistico, un progetto concettuale femminista lanciato a Parigi nel 2004 da Fulvia Carnevale e James Thornhill.
Dior, conversazione tra Maria Grazia Chiuri, Suzanne Santoro e Claire Fontaine
Video
mediasetinfinity
Al Brooklyn Museum di New York si incontrano per una conversazione le tre donne che hanno reso possibile questa sfilata: la stilista Maria Grazia Chiuri e le artiste Suzanne Santoro e Claire Fontaine.
In her latest exhibition, Constanze Ruhm sets out in search of a feminist way of seeing, aiming to shatter the male gaze and patriarchal image regime. In doing so she scrutinizes which connections to historic moments and figures from feminist movements are suited to being revisited and projected into the future.
The artist has chosen the broken mirror as a figure, visual metaphor, and as the layout of the exhibition at the belvedere21. It is rich in symbolism: the destruction of an ideal of beauty encapsulated by reflections in the mirror and their permanent appraisal; the fragmentation of a linear temporality; the painful shattering of a female self-image through violence, combined with the search for a new constellation, which has yet to be found but needs to remain always open and fragmentary. Last but not least, the mirror travels through time (“uno specchio che viaggia nel tempo”): images from cinema, photography, from the history of painting all appear reflected in its surface.
In two newly devised video installations, a series of photos, the arranging of archival material, and the presentation of works by other feminist artists from the beginnings of the Italian women’s movement in the 1970s—such as Suzanne Santoro and Marinella Pirelli—Constanze Ruhm makes feminist art and film history visible in the mirror of contemporary art. One of the key figures in Ruhm’s exhibition is the Italian feminist Carla Lonzi with her concept of a fractured, fragmented temporality as a way of arriving at a different kind of image, film, and ultimately consciousness.
After this shattering, the goal is to employ performative rituals, theatrical evocations, and ambiguous signals to piece the fragments of the puzzle together again, creating a different body and thus contributing to the rewriting of (feminist) history.
Text by Claudia Slanar / Curated by Claudia SlanarPost not marked as liked
Io dico Io – I say I is the title of the exhibition that opens at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, curated by Cecilia Canziani, Lara Conte and Paola Ugolini. Loosely based on Carla Lonzi, I say I – I say I was born from the need to speak and speak in first person, to affirm one’s subjectivity, composing a single multitude, a multiplicity of I that resonates with consonances and dissonances. Conceived as an open investigation into the present, I say I – I say I pulverizes schematic patterns and preordained statutes, tracing a non-linear path: a narrative that sediments stories, looks, imaginations.
A selfie, a self-portrait, an adventure. The exhibition brings together Italian artists of different generations who in different historical and social contexts have narrated their adventure in search of authenticity, restoring their way of living the world through a constellation of visions. Self-representation, the gaze that challenges roles, writing as a practice and self-narration, the body as a measure, limit, boundary, resistance to homologation are just some of the themes around which the exhibition builds a layered path, reversing points of view, creating new visions and narrations. I say I – I say I escapes any retrospective gaze and is in the present; it does not invent new words, but looks deeply into what we have – feminism – by presenting different and singular ways of giving it body. From the Central Hall, the driving and irradiation nucleus, the exhibition branches off along the path of Time is Out of Joint, weaving other stories about its plot. It occupies the rooms and the liminal areas of the museum and connects to the path that, from 23 April, presents the materials of the Carla Lonzi Archive to the public for the first time. Here, the exhibition activates Lonzi’s legacy, a crucial figure in Italian art criticism and feminism and invites us to reflect also on the transmission of his radical thought.
Italian version:
Io dico Io – I say I è il titolo della mostra che inaugura a febbraio 2021 alla Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, a cura di Cecilia Canziani, Lara Conte e Paola Ugolini. Liberamente tratto da Carla Lonzi, Io dico Io – I say I nasce dalla necessità di prendere la parola e parlare in prima persona, per affermare la propria soggettività, componendo una sola moltitudine, una molteplicità di io che risuona di consonanze e dissonanze.
La mostra riunisce artiste italiane di generazioni diverse che in differenti contesti storici e sociali hanno raccontato la propria avventura dell’autenticità, restituendo attraverso una costellazione di visioni il proprio modo di abitare il mondo.
Artiste in mostra/ Artists in show: Carla Accardi, Pippa Bacca, Elisabetta Benassi, Rossella Biscotti, Irma Blank, Renata Boero, Monica Bonvicini, Benni Bosetto, Chiara Camoni, Ludovica Carbotta, Lisetta Carmi, Monica Carocci, Gea Casolaro, Adelaide Cioni, Daniela Comani, Daniela De Lorenzo, Maria Adele Del Vecchio, Federica Di Carlo, Rä di Martino, Bruna Esposito, Cleo Fariselli, Giosetta Fioroni, Linda Fregni Nagler, Silvia Giambrone, Laura Grisi, Ketty La Rocca, Beatrice Meoni, Marisa Merz, Sabrina Mezzaqui, Camilla Micheli, Marzia Migliora, Elisa Montessori, Maria Morganti, Liliana Moro, Alek O., Marinella Pirelli, Paola Pivi, Anna Raimondo, Carol Rama, Antonietta Raphaël, Marta Roberti, Suzanne Santoro, Marinella Senatore, Ivana Spinelli, Alessandra Spranzi, Grazia Toderi, Tatiana Trouvé, Francesca Woodman.
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