Ritratto donna is an exhibition project that intertwines photography, archaeology, and anthropological reflection to trace a visual genealogy of the feminine. Through 137 photographs by Maria Paola Landini – selected from an archive of over one hundred thousand images gathered over fifty years – the exhibition establishes a dialogue between the faces and gestures of contemporary women and the material testimonies of ancient cultures.
At the heart of the project lies a central question: in what ways has female presence been represented – and how does it continue to represent itself – across time and space?
Throughout the exhibition, Landini’s images are interwoven with archaeological artefacts selected from the Museo Civico Archeologico di Bologna. This dialogue between past and present highlights both the persistence and the transformation of representations of the feminine.

The curatorial project is structured around three key conceptual axes:
– Memory and representation: photographs and artefacts converse to create a narrative that traverses the ages, moving beyond historical idealisations and restoring to female figures the authenticity of their everyday lives.
– Body and space: the relationship between the female body and social space emerges as a central element. The gestures, postures, and gazes documented by Landini reflect those found in ancient iconographies, tracing both continuities and discontinuities in the experience of inhabiting the world.
– Agency and visibility: the exhibition seeks to restore agency to the women portrayed, highlighting their capacity to inhabit the world as active, conscious, and autonomous subjects.
Surrounding the exhibition is a programme of encounters, guided tours, lectures, and performances, conceived as an extension of the visual narrative and as a space for interdisciplinary dialogue.

This structure transforms the exhibition into a platform for dialogue, where image, word, body, and sound intertwine to offer a complex, layered, and open reflection on the condition of women. Ritratto di donna builds a shared narrative, in which individual stories intertwine with collective memory, offering a space for recognition, listening, and transformation.