Gaia De Megni Exhibition at Casa della Memoria Recovers Forgotten Women of Italian Resistance

At Casa della Memoria in Milan, artist Gaia De Megni (born 1993, Santa Margherita) presents 'Per un’antologia delle ombre' from May 28 to September 13, 2026, curated by Salvatore Cristofaro and promoted by Careof. The exhibition marks the 80th anniversary of the Italian Republic and the first universal suffrage vote, but avoids celebratory rhetoric. Instead, it recovers female figures marginalized in official narratives of the Resistance and the Republic's founding. De Megni conducted extensive research in the archives of ANED and the Istituto Nazionale Ferruccio Parri, housed in Casa della Memoria. The show features photographs, letters, newspaper clippings, handwritten notes, and administrative documents that reveal intermittent presences—women depicted at the edges of images, barely named, sometimes unidentified. The central work, 'Medagliere alle Amanti,' is a large medal display composed of eight paper flowers derived from Monique Wittig's 'Appunti per un dizionario delle amanti.' Instead of traditional medals, fragile floral silhouettes critique heroic rhetoric, using paper as a metaphor for non-monumentalized memory. De Megni cites Anna Magni, a UDI representative who spoke alongside Togliatti about women's suffrage but was forgotten by newspapers that published a single unnamed photo. The exhibition engages with Wittig's rewriting of mythology as a response to hierarchical archiving.