Re-Materialization of Language. 1978-2022
2 October 2022 - 3 June 2023

The exhibition Materializzazione del linguaggio (Materialization of language), curated by artist and poet Mirella Bentivoglio, opened on 20 September 1978 at the Magazzini del Sale, as part of the XXXVIII Venice Biennale. The show moved across word and image to comprise works of 90 international female artists, poets and collectives engaged in researching verbal and visual issues concerned with the “relationship between women and language”. The materialization aspect lay in the embodiment of uncontaminated forms of communication to express a transgressive identity of radical rejection of patriarchal language, both poetically and critically.

Re-Materialization of Language. 1978-2022 presents a wide selection of the artworks exhibited originally, together with others from the same years and more documentation material, providing a philological reconstruction of an exhibition that has over time become a point of reference for the research of female and feminist artists, but also the contemporary reactivation of its historical instances. Taking the works themselves as an inspiration, the exhibition layout is primarily built around the alphabet as the zero degree of language, and then develops around the binomials of work/document, exhibition/book, wall/case. The invitation is to continuously update language as this was handed down to us, so that we may reappropriate it and express ourselves in the way we deem most authentic and personal.

The exhibition marks the centenary of Mirella Bentivoglio’s birth (Klagenfurt am Wörthersee, 1922 - Rome, 2017).

Curated by Cristiana Perrella, Andrea Viliani. Associate curator Vittoria Pavesi
Exhibition design by Matilde Cassani

In collaboration with Mart, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto

Special thanks to Museion - Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Bolzano

With the kind support of: Autonome Provinz Bozen / Autonomous Province of Bolzano; Bautechnik; Eurobeton 2000

Technical sponsor Campeggi