ANASYRMA. FEMMINA* ALLA LUCE DEL SOLE

ANASYRMA. FEMMINA* ALLA LUCE DEL SOLE

The first solo exhibition by artist Rebecca Momoli at Galleria Moitre, Turin

Anasyrma (from Ancient Greek ἀνάσυρμα, composed of ana – “above, up” and syrma – “skirt, train”) is the act of intentionally lifting the skirt to reveal the genitals.

Driven by a desire to expand the symbolic expression of being female on both cultural and political levels, ANASYRMA. FEMMINA* ALLA LUCE DEL SOLE explores the link between genital exhibition and a combative, magical, and revolutionary femininity.

Starting from the performative and ritual dimension of anasyrma, a series of previously unseen works take shape through photography and installation, immortalizing obscene, laughable, and sacred bodies in a pantheon of fighters. A femininity that is embodied—a porous, rhizomatic fabric traversed by transfeminist liberation.

Rather than understanding the social construction of femininity in the West solely as a mold imposed by the oppressor, Momoli looks to the power and wonder—at times frightening—of free subjectivities. The construction and deconstruction of femininity, made explicit by the asterisk in the title, opens the possibility of rewriting its fate.

Despite its territorial specificity, anasyrma is globally tied to the tradition of female and hermaphroditic deities. A body that undresses can banish a storm, grant fertility, curse or heal; it can mock, it can frighten. Throughout history, the exposure of genitals has been enacted as an apotropaic act, a military tactic, or a form of protest.

In the exhibited works, the gesture of undressing—performed by ten bodies in ten acts—embodies the female and feminized history of the world, from prehistory to the present day, paving the way for a feminine and other futurity. Skirts are lifted and vaginas speak, vulvas exist, lips and clitorises free themselves from the sexualizing male gaze.

The vulva revealed in the act of anasyrma viscerally displays the body of a witch, a healer, a hag, and a subversive. Through it pass the universal and the divine, male violence and the complicity of those who resist patriarchy, love and destruction, trauma and genocide, genius and legacy, pleasure and ecstasy, sexual power and freedom, joy.

ANASYRMA. FEMMINA* ALLA LUCE DEL SOLE makes a call to Western society as a whole, urging it to fight in solidarity and complicity for total liberation from the hetero-cis-patriarchy and from the neo-colonial and capitalist system that stifles the rights and desires of women and all free subjectivities. In tribute to Italian transfeminisms and the fighters who shaped the history of female emancipation, this exhibition is dedicated to all.

ANASYRMA. FEMMINA* ALLA LUCE DEL SOLE aims to stimulate the imagination and language around feminized bodies through visual poetry as a healing practice to empower the female autonomic nervous system.

ANASYRMA. FEMMINA* ALLA LUCE DEL SOLE featured the artwork ANASYRMA. FEMMINA* ALLA LUCE DEL SOLE