In collaboration with the German Artists’ Association, 24 international women artists trace 75 years of time. Among them, Daniela Comani reflects on media and literature. She’s the only Italian, and we had a chat with her.
Motherhood and care work, structural violence, lack of visibility and representation in galleries and collections: the exhibition Our Voices. Following the Traces of Female Visual Artists. 75th Anniversary of Deutscher Künstlerbund opened in the city of Ludwigshafen am Rhein to take stock of the situation of women artists in the last 75 years. The Deutscher Künstlerbund (German Artists’ Association) was in fact re-founded in 1950 after World War II, with the precise aim to advocate for the interest of visual artists. With this exhibition, curated by Dr. Almut Hüfler, the association wants to shed light on the obstacles that women still have to face working in the contemporary art world. From Niki de Saint Phalle to Christiane Löhr, the 24 international artists have been called to create a dialogue that goes beyond the generational differences and the plurality of media. Among them, the Italian and Berlin-based artist Daniela Comani (1965, Bologna) displays three works from her archive, challenging cultural traditions and social mores through simple yet subversive acts.
ORLANDO’S LIBRARY: A HOMAGE TO VIRGINIA WOOLF
Orlando’s Library (2021 – ongoing) catches our eye for the pleasing aesthetic, but as we get closer we realize that Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote La Petite Princesse, Italo Calvino signed The Baroness in the Trees and Virginia Woolf is the author of Mr. Dalloway. Comani manipulates the book covers of the two-dimensional bookshelf and uses gendering as a technique to re-read some immortal classics, paying tribute to Virginia Wollf’s Orlando: “I found the book interesting not only because of its gender fluid protagonist, but also for the way Woolf makes her heroine cross time, from the Renaissance to the 20th century. I thought about that also when working at It Was Me. Diary 1900-1999 (2002 – ongoing).”
HOW DO WE READ VIOLENCE?
Gendering is used by the artist also in You Are Mine (2022 – ongoing), a series of newspaper articles manipulated and printed on aluminium supports that simulate wrinkled clippings: we read about violent women strangling their husbands with a scarf, ex-girlfriends killing after being rejected, the kind of stories we are so used to but that suddenly seem so strange. The operation sheds light on the absurdity of femicide in a subtle yet bold way. “When visitors approach the work, it’s always important that something happens. The work is always a sort of portrait, also for the visitors. The way we read an artwork is a reflection of ourselves,” the artist said. Comani also allows us to see the process she went through with our own eyes: Reversal exercise (2024) is a computer screen showing the cursor editing the articles, changing the gender of victims and oppressors. The visitor witnesses Comani’s process of manipulation, a fundamental part of her research: “There’s always a phase of filing, selection and manipulation. I immerse myself in the work and I start trying things. I don’t leave much room for feelings.” Practical, brutal and honest, Comani’s work reminds us that sometimes whispers are louder than shouts.
LINK
- https://www.wilhelmhack.museum/en/ausstellungen/aktuelle-ausstellungen/our-voices-auf-den-spuren-bildender-kuenstlerinnen-75-jahre-deutscher-kuenstlerbund#c28614
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