Tu che mi guardi

Between 1969 and 1970, Italy saw the rise of the first collectives and groups of women who, through the publication of their manifestos and street actions, initiated the age of the most powerful feminist protests in our country.

Fifty years later, the program of Palinsesti 2019 includes a group exhibition whose aim is to meditate upon the current state of female emancipation. It does so through an analysis of the sector that is most related to the exhibition itself: on the one hand, art, on the other hand, the world of appearance, which has lately been more and more influenced by social networks, the communication industry, and mass media.

The title of the exhibition, Tu che mi guardi (“You, who are looking at me”) – which is borrowed from a fundamental 1997 text about philosophy of narration by Adriana Cavarero Tu che mi guardi, tu che mi racconti (translated into English and published in 2000 by Routledge as Relating narratives: storytelling and selfhood.) – highlights the ambiguous and precarious balance existing in the relationship between women artists and the visual world: a constant oscillation between their active role as creators of images and as passive objectified subjects of the external gaze.

The exhibition does not shrink from facing topical issues related to the current female and feminist policies, thus integrating its analysis of the most contemporary outcomes of artistic investigation with social, economic and literary research.