Maria Grazia Chiuri Instagram – Suzanne Santoro was born in Brooklyn and she came to Rome in the mid-1960s, following Mark Rothko and his family and then settled there permanently in 1971, completely fascinated by the Eternal City and Mediterranean culture.
Between the 1960s and 1970s, her artistic production was intertwined with political activism, and Suzanne’s work was initially linked to the demands of the Roman feminist group Rivolta Femminile, founded in July 1970 by art critic and philosopher Carla Lonzi, artist Carla Accardi and political journalist Elvira Banotti. Suzanne Santoro’s artistic production translates into visual language the historical and personal need to respond to the ideological automatisms of contemporary narratives, with which the subordinate position of female subjectivity is established and maintained.
I am happy to return to Brooklyn to celebrate this incredible artist whose life has been devoted to feminism and feminist art.
Dior’s Fall Winter 2024 show at the @BrooklynMuseum is dedicated to Suzanne, paying homage to her work.
Slide 1:Photo Pietro Consagra. Rome, Pietro Consagra Studio, meeting of Rivolta Femminile, from the right Suzanne Santoro, Carla Lonzi, Carla Accardi, Marta Lonzi, 1971. On background Consagra sculpture: “Giardino bianco”, painted iron, 1966. Courtesy Archivio Pietro Consagra Milan.
Slide 2: From the right: Eva Menzio, Suzanne Santoro, and Edith Schloss at the house of Eva Menzio after the opening of the exhibition Un Quadro di Artemisia Gentileschi, Rome, 1976. Courtesy Suzanne Santoro and Archivia. | Posted on 17/Apr/2024 03:18:59
![Maria Grazia Chiuri Instagram – Claire Fontaine’s installation in occasion of the @Dior Fall Winter 2024 show held at the @BrooklynMuseum features colourful suspended neon lights that echo the triangle hand gesture of 1970s feminist demonstrations, a homage to Santoro’s work on the female body and female form.
Each neon depicts the hands of several people involved in the project, a sort of collective portrait.
The hands raised in a triangle to form a vagina appeared in squares in the 1970s and its story is told in the fantastic book Il Gesto Femminista, edited by Ilaria Bussoni and Raffaella Perna, in which its origins and history are traced with archive images and contributions from sociologists, philosophers, art historians, photographers and film directors, all women.
“Hands spread like wings to recall the women’s revolt when their hands were raised to form a rhombus, materialising the vagina. […] To have brought the vagina out in the open, being as desired as unknown, was an act of rare visual violence, because to materialise it, to duplicate it with our fingers, was also a way of exorcising it, of freeing ourselves from its slavery, of freeing a secret from the darkness that surrounds us.” Claire Fontaine
Slide 1 Claire Fontaine, Double (F), 2023
Slide 2: Photo: Paola Agosti. Roma, aprile 1977.
Slide 3: Photo: Paola Agosti. Roma, aprile 1977. .
Slide 4: Photo: Agnese De Donato](https://www.gethucinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/MariaGraziaChiuri11-aQTvrc7379-150x150.jpg)
