Chiara Fumai, a promising performance artist, has passed away at the age of 39.

Artist Chiara Fumai, one of the emerging names on the contemporary Italian scene, passed away at just 39 years old. Breaking the news on Facebook this evening, shortly before 8 p.m., was Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno journalist Pietro Marino, a friend of the artist, who learned of the incident from her mother. Funeral services will be held at 5 p.m. Aug. 17 at the Sacred Heart Church in Bari, the family’s hometown.

Born in Rome in 1978, Chiara Fumai had graduated in architecture from the Milan Polytechnic and continued her education at the Ratti Foundation in Como and the Dutch Art Institute in Arnhem, where she also taught. An artist specializing in performance, she has offered works to the public that are always connoted by a strong feminist component. Recent projects include her participation in the exhibition Corpo a Corpo | Body to Body at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome (where she brought one of her performances from 2013, during which she read the SCUM Manifesto of Valerie Solanas, the activist famous for making an attempt on Andy Warhol’s life) and her participation in the exhibition To repel Ghosts at the Guido Costa space in Turin, where she brought a 2015 video installation, The Book of Evil Spirits. She was to bring a performance of hers to the Red Bull Academy Bass Camp in Rome on September 14.

In 2013, Chiara Fumai had won, thanks precisely to her reading of Valerie Solanas, the ninth edition of the Premio Furla, with the following motivation: “The energy of the artist, the extraordinary commitment that emerges in her work, the choice of themes of close relevance, at the center of both contemporary artistic reflection and the society of our time, such as feminism, performative discourse and activism. The research work and deep conviction with which she approaches these issues, finding its roots in early feminism and conceptual performance but at the same time reinventing them from a perspective of continuity. It is the ability to establish a dialectic of confrontation that led the jury to award this artist.” To her credit she also had participation in dOCUMENTA13 (2012), a solo show at MACRO in Rome (2011), and participations in exhibitions at MAXXI, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Maison Rouge in Paris, and Studio Voltaire in London.

In a recent interview with Espoarte he had revealed some aspects of his artistic making: “With my research I try to enhance diversity. I am interested in using art to rediscuss the logocentric, phallocentric view on which the most widespread (Western) worldview is based. As I have often stated, through my works I do not claim to provide answers to the viewer. I merely formulate, by aestheticizing them, precise questions and try to do so by moving beyond good and evil. By subtracting my works from the dominant point of view, it is inevitable that my work comes across as highly polarized and therefore ultra-feminist. Although I belong to a post-post-feminist generation, I am honored to still carry this label: it was these movements that allowed me to become an artist and make it a full-time profession, not the great systematic philosophers. It is only fair, once in a while, to show gratitude.” Thecontemporary art world has lost a promising artist who would still give much.

Chiara Fumai, a promising performance artist, has passed away at the age of 39.

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