Abstract
Performance artist and poet Bianca Pucciarelli Menna’s (1931–) artistic production is characterized by her conception of art as a mixture of gesture, writing and sound. Her use of the male pseudonym, Tomaso Binga, reveals her efforts to break down social gender stereotypes and challenge the cultural privileges reserved for men in artistic circles of her time. By analyzing Binga’s visual experimentations during the 1970s, this chapter focuses on the ways that she proposed different linguistic codes to create a new visual grammar that could impact patriarchal artistic canons. How does Bianca Pucciarelli Menna’s male pseudonym contribute to that project and what visual strategies does she adopt to achieve her purpose? This chapter will examine how writing, images and body are all key elements in Binga’s search for a new language in art.
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Notes
- 1.
In the 1970s, Tomaso Binga took part in several exhibitions of female artists, among them: in 1977, Magma. Rassegna internazionale al femminile (Magma International Women’s Show), curated by Romana Loda, first installed at the Castelvecchio Museum in Verona and, later, at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara; in 1978 she participated in the collective Ennesima Nuova. Rassegna al femminile (Yet another new. Female review), organized by Loda at the Municipal Library of Verola Nuova in Brescia; later, she exhibited at the famous Materializzazione del Linguaggio (Materialization of Language), organized by Mirella Bentivoglio at the Venice Biennial in 1978; additionally, she took part in several editions of Dossier Donna. I would like to thank Raffaella Perna and Stefania Zuliani for their help. This study is partly the result of an analysis on Tomaso Binga I conducted in 2020 for a seminar held at the Università di Pisa for Prof. Sergio Cortesini.
- 2.
Rivolta Femminile was founded in 1970 in Rome by Carla Lonzi, Carla Accardi and Elvira Banotti. On the group’s concept of consciousness-raising (autocoscienza), see Iamurri (2021, 131–132).
- 3.
The regulation of the legitimate family (marriage, marital property and filiation) provided by the Italian Civil Code of 1942 was reformed in 1975. For additional information regarding this reform see “La riforma porta in casa la parità” (1975, 8).
- 4.
Binga held for the first time the performance Carta da parato in 1976 at Malangone house, a private residence in Rome. However, on this occasion she did not give her poetry reading “Io sono una carta.”
- 5.
A more extensive version of this text was printed in the catalogue of the exhibition held at L’Obelisco Gallery in Rome.
- 6.
On the Lavatoio Contumaciale (Contumaciale Washhouse), see “Chi va al Lavatoio” (1977, 11).
- 7.
A photograph of Binga’s performance is published in Dorfles and Maurizi (1981, 24).
- 8.
The paradigm shift from the object to the body as a medium, in Binga’s case, also coincided with a growing interest in avant-garde theater. This fact is confirmed by the dense program of theatrical events that she organized in Rome at the Lavatoio Contumaciale (Contumaciale Washhouse) starting from its opening in 1974.
- 9.
- 10.
Bentivoglio referred to Binga’s work Carta da parato.
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Caputo, C. (2023). The Body and the Asemantic Writing in the Performance of Tomaso Binga. 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_7
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