La Passione
Fotogalleriet is pleased to present the extensive group exhibition La Passione, a project by Marianne Heier. La Passione is a research-based endeavour project that stems from several years of conversations between the artist and the institution about Italian radical feminism and its special, close relationship with the visual arts and, especially photography. Consisting of an intergenerational and transhistorical overview —archival documentation, artworks, notes and other material— this unique presentation aims to shed light on cogent contemporary issues of biased genders’ norms and current resurging fascisms, in Italy and abroad, to address structural violence and where we decide to stand today.
Marianne Heier, a performance artist educated and imbued in the Italian academic context in the 1990s, enters La Passione in dialogue with feminist works from the 1970s and 1980s, up until today. Photography was quintessential for the rebellious generation of the 1960s and 1970s in finding a voice that didn’t need powerful and inaccessible museums for uttering one’s right to speak. Collective actions, performance, rioting, and pamphletting, go hand in hand with photo-based formats in a field where financial resources are scarce, political pressure is great and the patriarchal artistic genius holds the space and the budgets of museums, often devoted to painting and sculpture only.
The exhibition brings and bridges Italian feminist history into Norway to point out that the equality struggle never ended, and still, to the decades past the achievement of equal and fundamental gender rights in the 1970s, from this day, feminicide and violence against women and gender non-conforming bodies remains the unquestioned standard unconnected to forceful family ties, a dictatorship of gender and reproduction bundle by a pretense of tradition and traditional families.
Pippa Bacca, Bingöl Elmas, Betty Bee, Tomaso Binga, Lisetta Carmi, Marcella Campagnano, Agnese De Donato, Gruppo del Mercoledì (Diane Bond, Bundi Alberti, Paola Mattioli, Silvia Truppi), Lucia Marcucci, Alessandra Spranzi, Ottonella Mocellin, Chiara Fumai and, Silvia Giambrone.
The exhibition presents for the first time in Norway a large selection of works coming from the unique photographic collection of Collezione Donata Pizzi; additional works are on loan from the Chiara Fumai archive, Ottonella Mocellin, Alessandra Spranzi and Marco Vaglieri. In addition, we would like to thank individual artists Silvia Giambrone and Bingöl Elmas for giving permission to present their work within the exhibition, and curator Milovan Farronato.
We are very grateful for their generosity and collaboration.
Artist Marianne Heier extends her gratitude to Arts and Culture Norway for supporting the production of her work in view of the exhibition. We also acknowledge the kind support of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Oslo.
Antonio Cataldo (Curator and former Artistic director, Fotogalleriet)
Miki Gebrelul (Curator and Head of exhibitions, Fotogalleriet)
Lara Okafor (Curatorial Fellow, Fotogalleriet)
Heier will present a new performance to celebrate the pursue of freedom and the need for reformulating language. She continues her imaginative role developed in previous performative projects by acting as a guide or a messenger by collating material to form soft storytelling to invoke history to the active present. Here, Heier will also pay tribute to the work of Carla Lonzi (b.1931–d.1982), an art critic and an activist who left a great impact on Italian feminism.
Fotogalleriet would like to extend the following content warning for everybody visiting the exhibition:
The exhibition contains imagery of both explicit and relating to sexual violence, self-harm and suicide.
Guided tour by Marianne Heier.
Finissage, artist talk, book launch.
Lisa Andrine Bernhoft-Sjødin
Head of mediation and communications
lisa@fotogalleriet.no
For international press
Arash Shahali
Communication advisor
arash@fotogalleriet.no
