Seeing Ourselves: Self Portrait

Self-portrait as the deepest and most immediate expressive form

I'm Listening I'm Listening (2020) by Jonathan Onsuwan JohnsonLa Galleria Nazionale

But what is the form that best embodies this free and authentic expression of oneself?

Once again we discover that the answer is already enclosed in another key text by Carla Lonzi: Autoritratto (self-portrait)

Continuum. Prospettiva n°1 (2020) by Alice PadovaniLa Galleria Nazionale

In writing this work between ‘65 and ‘69, the author wanted to strip herself of her role as a critic, letting the artists she interviewed speak for themselves.

Therefore, after removing intellectual mediation, the self-portraits collected in the text «are less a response to the need to understand than to the need to engage in conversation with someone in a broadly communicative and humanly satisfying way».

APNEA (2020) by Daniela CapaldoLa Galleria Nazionale

This operation spawned such spontaneous and subjective stories that they turned out to be real political actions.

The call is in fact a reproduction, with current means, of that call to representative freedom as envisioned by Carla Lonzi.

Still -or above all- today the self-portrait continues to reveal itself as one of the most profound introspective gestures, needed to establish genuinely human relationships.

All good (“self-portraits”) (2020) by WoojinleeLa Galleria Nazionale

It is therefore obvious that no circumstances other than the current one could give rise to the need to offer again a space that could be used for self-reflection as well as being public.

The condition of forced isolation we experienced throughout the last year has resulted in a significant gap between the time available for reflection and the ability to share the results with each other.

Any discovery that remains private and unspoken is void of its «political» potential.

It is no coincidence that we refer to the citizen of πόλις as «political», the one who expressed his value as a man in the square, the only place that allows a person’s thought to manifest itself, becoming a public good.

L’οἶκος (the home) on the other hand, it is the space for women and slaves, the place of what is and must remain private, unexpressed.

It will be easy to discern how the call Taci anzi parla wished to present itself as the square that allowed us for a moment to bring ourselves out of our homes, restoring our intrinsic social dimension.

Credits: Story

Written by Arianna Tremolanti.

Credits: All media
The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions, listed below, who have supplied the content.
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