Review of VALIE EXPORT AND KETTY LA ROCCA: BODY SIGN Two iconic artists of Italian and international feminism on display at Ropac in Milan
By Emma Sedini
A leap back in time, to the warm heart of the second half of the twentieth century, to the years of authentic feminism and the new explorations of expressiveness aimed at conquering new media. This is Thaddaeus Ropac's new winter offering—the second since the gallery opened— in Milan. A dialogue between two of the leading figures of the 1960s female art scene, among the most irreverent, witty, and innovative. We are talking about Valie Export (Austria, 1940) and Ketty La Rocca (La Spezia, 1956). The former, a pioneer of cinema and installation art, aimed at expressing forms of radical feminism unlike any before. The latter, initially trained in electronic music, later followed in the footsteps of Umberto Eco and Roland Barthes, toward a new form of communication based on bodily gestures, especially the hands. Two strong and exuberant voices, whose installations disrupt the refined atmosphere of the gallery in Palazzo Belgioioso, filling it with character and irreverence.
At the center of Body Sign, the title of the exhibition hosted in Milan by Ropac, hands occupy a place of honor. A founding element of the conceptual poetics of both artists, they become the object of semantic and visual parallels. They are an invitation to explore the body, often to touch it through the hands, subverting the ideal of abstraction of conceptual art with a new concreteness that broadens its definition to include this corporeal sphere. An example for Ketty La Rocca are the historic Craniologies, created by superimposing X-ray images of a skull on those of her hand, with the repetition of the word “you.” This unprecedented contact between the inside and outside of one's organism provokes an unprecedented transcendence of semantic and physical spheres. Hands are again at the center of the still video SYNTAGMA, present in the exhibition, by Valie Export, in which her hands emerge from the darkness, winking at the viewer.
[Translated from Italian]
