The Error, The Imperfect and the Out of Place as Language
Raffaella Perna, art historian, PhD and professor, talks about Tomaso Binga's work
Io sono li li li, io sono Lilith (Dattilocodice) (1978) by Binga Tomaso (Bianca Pucciarelli)La Galleria Nazionale
Since 1971, the artist Bianca Pucciarelli decided to adopt a male pseudonym, Tomaso Binga, to denounce the discrimination that women suffered at the time.
Discrimination and disparities concerning access to exhibitions, to public and private collections, and which marked the lives of women and artists for centuries.
Tomaso Binga has always fought against these disparities within her works with a profoundly militant slant, above all by denouncing the discriminations found in language.
Even the work displayed at the exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern Art - which belongs to the Dattilocodice (Typocode) series - highlights this interest by Tomaso Binga to work on the subject, on the very body of language, of words, of the alphabet, to change it and attempt to broaden the meaning and sense of language in an inclusive way: in order to convey the feminine components of creativity within the language itself.
This work belongs to this series of the Dattilocodice which was exhibited for the first time in ‘78 in the exhibition Materializzazione Del Linguaggio (Materialisation of Language) at the Venice Biennale of ‘78, curated - this section - by Mirella Bentivoglio who for the occasion brought together the work of over eighty artists. It was the first time an institution like the Biennale granted access to so many women artists at the same time.
Mater- Litanie lauretane (Poesia vivente)La Galleria Nazionale
The work in question is naturally linked to a work on language that Tomaso Binga had been carrying out since the beginning of the decade and in my opinion was strictly related - even if not stylistically and aesthetically immediately visible - with the series of the Alfabetiere murale (Mural Alphabet) where words, individual letters of the alphabet, were created from the artist’s naked body.
Mater- Litanie lauretane (Poesia vivente)La Galleria Nazionale
Why is there a connection? There is a connection because in those works in which the artist exhibits herself, she wishes to highlight the error, the imperfect, the out of place, starting right with her own living body.
In the case of Dattilocodice, the error, the out of place, is returned mechanically, with a gesture linked to the typewriter, yet the error becomes a means through which to create a new language in which women can be understood and find a place for self-expression.
Voice message by Raffaella Perna, art historian PhD and professor at Università di Roma La Sapienza and Università degli Studi di Catania.
