Twenty years of the women’s Biennale in Ferrara mean complete attention and fundamental verification of a creativity that sees its political reason in gender contrast, to which society has shown itself to be increasingly sensitive over the years. We decline the plural world in the masculine, due to a grammatical convention: sister and brother are brothers; daughter and son are children; husband and wife are spouses; mother and father are parents, and so on. But the words of art are all feminine, starting from the fundamental one: art. Poetry, creativity, beauty, aesthetics, painting, sculpture, architecture, person; and feminine they are also poet, artist. Then, to interpret them, over the centuries, we have only crossed males, as if by genetic right. The comeback was slow, but inexorable: first in writing, with very important examples; then, especially starting from the second half of the last century, which means the time of my generation, female creativity has reached and surpassed, as in a growing awareness of an elementary right, male creativity, with a progressive and inexorable advancement, without conflict, for reappropriation. It is natural for women to create. Creation is also feminine like light, like night, like inspiration, like melancholy, like nostalgia, like meditation, like fantasy. Ferrara (female) in her creativity laboratories noticed it, and made a lot of it, with perseverance and discipline, until reaching this happy anniversary. And here is the historical memory that accompanies this occasion which has become institutional and which consecrates Ferrara for responsibility and civil conscience. The organizing committee’s decision to remember, in the title of the catalogue, that this is the 20th edition is proud. A birthday that indicates a memorable milestone in her history.
This particular year’s project, Yours in Solidarity, is curated by Sofia Gotti and Caterina Iaquinta who connected a series of references to the new proposals through research in the Biennale donna archive preserved at the headquarters of the Udi – Italian Women’s Union – in Ferrara, the driving force behind its conception way back in 1984. An in-depth analysis in the catalog concerns the city life of the association, with documents, writings, letters, photographs, posters, wonderful banners, among the most notable of Udi’s own activity, starting from the 1950s. An instructive story, and not only of conquests, but of inevitable and shared awareness, also for the benefit of the “other world”. For this reason, it is difficult today to talk about female art as a distinct and recognizable qualification. Biennale Donna is a biennial of the rights of humanity, beyond gender creativity, in the power of invention of the “person”, which is a synthesis of intelligence, knowledge, imagination, passion (all nouns of the feminine gender). There is no “man” or “woman”. Maybe there were. But just as there are no “female” buildings and interpretations of “female” symphonies or solo instruments in architecture and music in the most recent female conquests.
Zaha Hadid or Marta Argerich give us absolute spaces and absolute Chopin and Beethoven. It would make no sense to decline them. This is the highest achievement. Overcoming gender, beyond redemption, beyond reclamation. And it’s not even a replacement. It is complete equality, it is identity. Thoughts go beyond behaviors. Thoughts have no sex, and if they do, it is through completeness, not through difference. The feminine component is vital and essential in the male artist. How much femininity is there in Leopardi or Chopin or De Pisis? Witnesses of this achievement are the six artists invited to represent the chosen theme: Binta Diaw, Amelia Etlinger, Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, Sara Leghissa, Muna Mussie, Nicoline Van Harskamp. Artists distinguished by origin, generation, experience, belonging, but who, in the shared value of solidarity, address the fundamental issues for humanity, not only for women, of colonialism, migration, individual rights, marginality, identity, activism, geopolitics, war.
Particularly notable, in these times of intolerance and anti-Israeli discrimination, is the presence of a great artist from Tel Aviv, Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, who is not only a painter, but a psychoanalyst, philosopher, militant feminist contemporary art theorist in the identification of the principles of trauma, oblivion and gaze, summarized in the theory of “matrixial” or “matriciel”. Through her paintings, drawings and notebooks, Ettinger evokes tormented and dissolving images of mortified female mythological personalities (such as Eurydice, Medusa, Ophelia and Persephone), but she also elaborates on women’s wartime traumas. Against anti-Semitic statements, Ettinger, after October 7, resigned from the organizing committee of the next edition of Documenta. This is your letter of resignation «Dear colleagues, I hereby formally resign from the research committee of Documenta 16 … The art world as we saw it has collapsed and fragmented: what can art contribute to in our dark times? The question of the meaning of the human being is closely linked to the meaning of art. Artists do not exist as decorative accessories for politics. The function of art is not to aestheticize political ideas (W. Benjamin); then I quoted Paul Celan and continued with these lines Psalms that express my fear: “The abyss calls to the abyss. And my heart is a wounded space.”
Words and metaphors don’t bleed, but their impact can bleed. The situation in the Middle East is tragic. Innocent civilians have suffered and died, and my heart aches for each death. Every life is precious. During our last meeting a few days after the Hamas massacre that began the tragic war, details of the Hamas massacre and the abduction of Israeli civilians, women, and civilians flashed across my broadcast screen. We have time, we can change the program, let the suffering and torment manifest. We can take our time. Time to complain, Kaddish. It’s time to lament, “Stabat mater dolorosa… O quam tristis et afflicta fuit illa benedicta Mater”. It’s time to stop, reflect and refocus on new visions and reflect on the possibility of addressing the dimension of art… The future Documenta has been on my mind continuously for the last seven months. Unfortunately today I feel I can no longer contribute to this process.” It is very important that it is at the women’s Biennale. Her presence in Ferrara, a city dedicated to coexistence with the Jewish people, is a true testimony of freedom and solidarity, in the context of female autonomy.
