VAT at 22% on tampons, 5% on truffles: artist Cristina Donati Meyer protests with an installation

Cristina Donati Meyer (Milan, Italy, 1985), an artist who has become famous for her temporary installations that denounce current events (and which she has renamed “art-entati”), has returned to protest with a work in downtown Milan. The object of the protest, this time, is what has already been dubbed the “tampon tax,” or the 22 percent VAT on tampons: a tax considered excessive and vexatious, if one considers that tampons are an indispensable product for women and that such a high taxation, the artist points out, “could compromise the quality of life of all those who do not have sufficient economic availability to sustain a fixed monthly expense that stretches over time.” The Pentaleghist government has been hotly contested, since it first announced a measure to reduce the tax on tampons to 5 percent, but the measure did not materialize. The taxation on tampons stands out especially when compared to that on truffles, a luxury good, on which VAT is just 5 percent.

So, Cristina Donati Meyer set up in Piazza San Babila na of her provocative works of art: a bust of a woman immersed in a lake of flaming red blood. Around the bust, scattered on the asphalt, were placed female tampons. “The 22 percent VAT on tampons,” the artist-activist commented, “seems to reiterate that being a woman is a luxury or a guilt and that menstruation should be blamed, other than Saudi Arabia. And we are in Italy.”

Pictured is Donati Meyer’s installation.

VAT at 22% on tampons, 5% on truffles: artist Cristina Donati Meyer protests with an installation

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