Territories without a master: women artists' and directors' screening of the female condition at MAXXI

From November 21 to December 10, 2023 MAXXI and Fondazione In Between Art Film present in the museum’s videogallery No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image, an adaptation of the exhibition of the same name held in summer 2022 at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin.

Fondazione In Between Art Film invited the exhibition’s curators, Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg, to choose three thematic areas of the exhibition and to present three screening programs (one per week) comprising a selection of nineteen non-fiction films and videos made between the 1970s and 1990s, most of which have never been exhibited in Italy, and which propose new languages for representing gendered experience. Focusing on the period in which women’s liberation movements took hold internationally, the exhibition aims to pay tribute to the work made in the past by women artists, directors, and collectives from around the world in response to urgencies that are still relevant today.

The program will be enriched by a conversation between Erika Balsom and Ilaria Gianni, co-curator of the review and lecturer in Film Studies at King’s College London, and independent curator, writer and lecturer, respectively, on Friday, Nov. 24, 2023 at 6 p.m. at MAXXI’s Videogallery. The talk will be held in English.

The works of Helena Amiradzibi, Essie Coffey, Gardi Deppe and Barbara Kasper, Brigitte Krause, Ingrid Oppermann, Tamara Wyss, Sara Gomez, Grupo Chaski, Krystyna Gryczelowska, Gwendolyn, HAN Ok-hee, HANEDA Sumiko, Nikolai Khodataev and Olga Khodotayeva, Sandra Lahire, Robin Laurie, and Margot Nash, Nalini Malani, Cecilia Mangini, Barbara McCullough, Helke Misselwitz, Tracey Moffat, Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley, and Chick Strand present different expressions and ways of using themoving image, such as documentary, experimental film, and video. Although these genres were widely practiced by women, their works nevertheless remained on the margins of film histories, including feminist ones. Many of these works were conceived in close relation to feminist activism, which has long recognized the importance of visual media as a tool of domination and emancipation; others exist independently of any social or political alignments; still others express feminist demands even if their authors have never declared themselves as such.

The title of the review refers back to Vietnamese filmmaker and intellectual Trinh T. Minh-ha’s 1991 book, When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender and Cultural Politics: “No Master Territories” is a statement expressing the need to rethink the world boldly, ending all forms of control, not just gender control. No Master Territories : Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image presents experimental approaches that move away from the romantic concept of the ’artistic masterpiece’. Trinh T. Minh-ha’s phrase “No Master Territories” encapsulates a generative force that pushes one to imagine radical reinvention. The works in the exhibition accept this bet by embracing the moving image as a source of feminist imagination, not only to relate to the world but also to reconstruct it.

Calendar of screenings

Week 1 (Nov. 21 - 26)
HAN Ok-hee; Gardi Deppe and Barbara Kasper, Brigitte Krause, Ingrid Oppermann, Tamara Wyss; Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley; Robin Laurie and Margot Nash; Helke Misselwitz; Gwendolyn; Nalini Malani; Chick Strand.

Week 2 (Nov. 28-Dec. 3)
Nikolai Khodataev and Olga Khodotayeva; Cecilia Mangini; Helena Amiradzibi; Krystyna Gryczelowska; Grupo Chaski; Sara Gomez.

Week 3 (December 5 - 10)
Barbara McCullough; HANEDA Sumiko; Sandra Lahire; Essie Coffey; Tracey Moffat.

Free admission during museum hours (Tuesday through Friday 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.).

Image: Cecilia Mangini, Being Women (1965) 35 mm, 29’, Italy. Courtesy of the artist and Audiovisual Archive of the Workers’ and Democratic Movement.

Territories without a master: women artists' and directors' screening of the female condition at MAXXI

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