RENATA RAMPAZZI CRUOR – blood shed by women
A new installation on the theme of violence against women
Violence against women has become a daily ritual. Now only treated as a matter of fact in crime news stories, the topic requires renewed thinking to achieve a greater awareness of the issues.
In this sense, through its characteristically direct language, art can also play an important role in raising awareness to encourage a responsible rejection of and rebellion against the phenomenon.
These are the premises for Renata Rampazzi’s exhibition entitled CRUOR – sangue sparso di donne (Cruor – blood shed by women), due to run from 6 April to 17 June 2018 at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice.
Accompanied by a previously unpublished writing by Dacia Maraini and a critical text by Claudio Strinati, the exhibition consists of a large installation by an artist who is a very incisive witness to her age.
Since the late 1970s, the theme of violence, blood and pain have featured so prominently in Renata Rampazzi’s creative universe as to become the most characteristic idiom in her artistic development.
“Many of my works” – Renata Rampazzi comments – “bore traces of my emotional turmoil caused by real-life instances of male oppression. It was a personal cry, an uneasiness that revolved around sex and the metaphor of the wound, referring to actions and behaviours still generally concealed and hushed up. Today in terms of diffusion, violence and ostentation, they are not only a social phenomenon polluting western societies but in various ways call for denunciation, rebellion, the rejection of complicity and subjection in all individual and collective expressions of culture, power and social life.”
Faced with the current resurgence of violence against women, Renata Rampazzi has returned to this topic in new works, made with materials and forms that communicate in an even more direct and compelling way.
At the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, the CRUOR exhibition, specially designed for the Sala Borges on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, combines the past with the present. A present in which canvases are replaced by gauzes alluding to bandages on wounds and sores – the signs of disfigurement. In these works, the pigments and densely painted swaths in hues of red, also containing traces of blood, refer to the tragic reality of the victims’ slashed bodies, mutilations, insults and sufferings.
The exhibition itinerary starts with the works made by Renata Rampazzi in the 1970s and ’80s and ends with an installation specifically made for the occasion. Meant to be more than a straightforward moment of contemplation, the installation consists of a labyrinth of cloths and gauzes hanging from the ceiling to a deep-red floor. The work physically and emotionally envelops visitors, involving them not only aesthetically but also emotionally and socially.
Published by Edizioni Sabinae, the bilingual (Italian and English) exhibition catalogue includes texts by Dacia Maraini and Claudio Strinati.
During the exhibition, the Fondazione Giorgio Cini will host a round table on the theme of violence against women, coordinated by the historian Francesca Medioli. The speakers will include Chiara Valentini, Dacia Maraini, Luciana Castellina and Chiara Saraceno.
