Io dico Io – I say I

Loosely based on Carla Lonzi’s texts, Io dico Io – I say I originates from a necessity to take the floor and speak for oneself in order to assert one’s subjectivity, by creating a single multitude, a multiplicity of I that resonates with consonances and dissonances.

Io dico Io – I say I, conceived as an open inquiry on the present, pulverizes schematisms and preordained statutes and traces a non-linear route: a narration that settles stories, gazes, imagery. A selfie, a self-portrait, an adventure. The show puts together Italian female artists of different generations, who, in different historical and social contexts, have told their own adventure of authenticity and have expressed their own way of inhabiting the world through a constellation of visions.

Self-representation, a gaze that challenges existing roles, writing as a practice and self-narration, body as a measure, a limit and a trespass, resisting homologation — these are just a few of the themes around which the show is layered, overturning points of view and creating new visions and narratives.

Io dico Io – I say I, evades any retrospective vision and is situated in the present; it does not invent new words, but instead looks deep into the word we already have, “feminism”. Through various and singular ways, the show gives substance to that notion.

Starting in the Salone Centrale, a core that drives and irradiates, the show branches out into the rooms of Time is out of joint, a dialogue that adds new stories to the narrative. The works of the show occupy halls and liminal zones of the museum and enter, from the 23rd of April, the part in which the materials from Carla Lonzi Archive are presented for the first time.

The show activates the legacy of Lonzi, a crucial figure for art criticism and Italian feminism, and invites the spectators to reflect on the transmission of her radical thought.

The works of the show occupy halls and liminal zones of the museum and enter the part in which the materials from Carla Lonzi Archive are presented for the first time

In this section the radical thought of the art critic and feminist engages with two new
commissions presented on this occasion by Italian artists as well as with the works of the
collections of the museum. This dialogue reveals multiple and unprecedented possibilities of
interpreting the work of this figure, internationally renowned in the fields of art history and the
history of feminism.