Donne, arte, ferite: il corpo della contemporaneità

Abstract

The contribution examines a particular area of ​​historical and artistic production directed to a form of self-representation of women in which the artist’s body is wounded, injured, abused, tortured. A wound that, real or symbolic, stands out as encouragement to talk about themselves, their traumas of her own life, expressing the ability, as women and as artists, to express themselves and, therefore, its own identity. The choice to focus on this particular topic finds a match in today’s social behavior – a present marked by the triumph of the body – where the sign of the wound appears distinctive connotation of common life: from the piercing, tattoos, aesthetics of ripped that characterizes the “classic” punk clothing, to the cosmetic surgery, the “wound of the contemporary”.   The wound, now more than ever, put itself as a distinctive of fashion, reflected in the art that confirms his being pre-figurative, frequently in advance of events and attitudes. But it is not only the contemporary to entrust to the self injuries the task to externalize their being. Also in the past the art  resorted to the iconography of the trauma as a language strives to “say something”, whether personal affairs or related to the sphere of the collective. From this premise moves this contribution: a path that, starting from examples in the past where the artists “represent” his wounded body, reaches the short century, welcoming experience where women “have” their body hurt, abused, even transformed by  the disease confirming their identity as the “stronger sex”.