Trieste, portraits and self-portraits of women artists and photographers on display

In Trieste, at the Magazzino delle Idee, the exhibition Io, lei, l’altra - Portraits and photographic self-portraits of women artists, curated by Guido Comis in collaboration with Simona Cossu and Alessandra Paulitti, will be on display from March 19 to June 26, 2022. Produced and organized by ERPAC - Ente Regionale per il Patrimonio Culturale del Friuli Venezia Giulia, the exhibition aims to retrace, through ninety works, the photography of the last hundred years, from Wanda Wulz to Cindy Sherman, from Florence Henri to Nan Goldin.

Photographic portraiture and self-portraiture testify to how difficult the process of self-assertion and the conquest of a new social identity was for women artists in the twentieth century and the early years of the new century. More conventional forms of representation were contrasted with new ways of expressing one’s personality; established roles of women’s representation, repetitive poses borrowed from traditional portraits were replaced by novel modes.

Photographic portraits taken by men, on display those of Man Ray, Edward Weston, Henry Cartier-Bresson, and Robert Mapplethorpe, are flanked by portraits and self-portraits of women artists and photographers, including Wanda Wulz, Inge Morath, Vivian Maier, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, and Marina Abramović.

Leonor Fini, Marquise Luisa Casati, Meret Oppenheim use the lens of male colleagues to express all their charm and seductive power. In contrast, Florence Henri, Francesca Woodman and Nan Goldin turn the camera lens on themselves to reveal hidden aspects of their personalities, including their weaknesses, to themselves and to the viewer.

Divided into sections, the exhibition aims to account the various forms of representation of the roles women play in photographs. The section “Artists and Models” is dedicated to women who were creators and at the same time lent their faces and bodies for others’ works, as in the case of Meret Oppenheim, Tina Modotti, Dora Maar. The section “The Body in Fragments” collects self-portraits that return images of partial bodies, reflected in fractured mirrors, with the epidermis traversed by lines that interrupt their integrity, as if the difficulty of representing oneself were reflected in this. The 1970s portraits featuring Valie Export, Jo Spence and Renate Bertlmann ironically mimic the traditional image of woman as mother, housewife or sex object. “One, None and a Hundred Thousand” collects the self-portraits of female artists who, from Claude Cahun to Cindy Sherman, have used their bodies to interpret through masquerades different identities or stereotypes. Another section addresses the theme of stereotypes in the representation from cultural and sexual identities, yet another those in the definition of canons of beauty while some photographs are dedicated to female artists next to their own creations as in the case of the famous portrait of Louise Bourgeois made by Robert Mapplethorpe.

The exhibition is part of the project initiated by ERPAC’s afferent cultural institutions dedicated to the theme of self-portraiture and portraiture from an art-historical perspective ranging from the Renaissance to the present day.

For more info: www.magazzinodelleidee.it

Hours: Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Closed Mondays.

Image: Veno Pilon, Leonor Fini (circa 1935) © Primoz Brecelj. Pilonova Galerija Ajdovscina - Pillon Gallery, Ajdovscina/Aidussina

Trieste, portraits and self-portraits of women artists and photographers on display

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