Tomaso Binga's 'Revolution' at Frittelli Gallery in Florence

The Frittelli Gallery in Florence presents a solo exhibition of Tomaso Binga (born Bianca Pucciarelli Menna, Salerno, 1931), a legendary Italian artist known for her feminist performance art. The show's centerpiece is the word 'Revolution' spelled out by letters formed from the postures of a nude female body—Binga's own. This work, titled 'Alfabeto poetico monumentale' (2019), was originally commissioned for a Dior fashion show and relates to her earlier series 'Alfabetiere murale' (1976), which challenged imposed semantics on the female body. The current iteration composes words like 'IoMe' and 'Revolution' as political acts. Curator Raffaella Perna contextualizes Binga within a generation of Italian women artists from the 1960s and 1970s who embraced neo-feminism and used language as an expressive form from which women had been excluded. The exhibition also includes photographs of performances from the 1970s, polystyrene sculptures of hands and feet titled 'Congiunte/Separate' (1973), and recent works on paper: 'OperaPoesia' (2017), 'ArteNatura' (2021), and 'AlphaSymbol' (2022). The 2019 letters are made of polystyrene packaging waste, 160 cm tall—the artist's height—critiquing the monumentalization and commodification of the female body.