Performance by Giulia Damiani
Heart Brake24 January 2025
Turin
h.18.30 Almanac, Via Reggio 13
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Followed by the screening of :
Le sibille, dir. Lina Mangiacapre and Le Nemesiache, 1977
Il mare ci ha chiamate, dir. Lina Mangiacapre and Le Nemesiache, 1978.
Giulia Damiani is an artist and writer working with performance. Her research combines body, place and feminist creative methods to reach fault lines in language and context. Her new performance Heart Brake captures the anxiety and sense of disillusionment of our times and stages a feminist psycho-fable, bringing guests from the past and present into the space. She asks us to slow down our accelerated pace and heartbeats to take a look at the fissure that has been created. Heartbrokenness is more than an affective state and is said to be “at the heart of all revolutionary consciousness”. As she labours on stage using rocks, keyboard and voice, she evokes the legendary folk saint Wilgefortis via a song and prayer. Also known as Sint Ontkommer and Santa Liberata, Wilgefortis is an ancient bearded-woman whose gruesome story and gender-transgressive identity offered protection and inspiration to people breaking from violent conventions. Who will be allowed to give the blow and who’s forced to receive it?
Biographies
GIULIA DAMIANI
Giulia Damiani is an artist and writer working with multidisciplinary installations and performance, based in Amsterdam. Her latest project Heart Brake was presented at Centrale Fies, Italy in September 2024 and Rozenstraat in Amsterdam in October 2024, supported by the Mondriaan Fonds, AFK and Voordekunst. In 2022 she completed her practice-based PhD in the Art Department at Goldsmiths, University of London (AHRC scholarship), writing about the feminist group Le Nemesiache from Naples and making and interpreting new performances inspired by the group’s ritual investment in their geomorphic, mythological and urban landscape. She was a fellow and collaborator for the Ritual and Display edition at If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution, Amsterdam (2019–21), and in 2020 she curated From the Volcano to the Sea: The Feminist Group Le Nemesiache in 1970s-1980s Naples at Rongwrong, Amsterdam. In 2022 she curated the same show Part II in London. She edited the book Ritual and Display, published by If I Can’t Dance in 2022.LE NEMESIACHE
Founded by philosopher, artist and writer Lina Mangiacapre in 1970, Le Nemesiache was an open group, comprising exclusively female participants, active in Naples. Together, and at various intensities, they participated in the construction of a “different daily life”, a life devoted to the conception and realization of relationships and creative political actions. Their expansive work included films, performances, rituals, conferences, parties and protests, purposefully blurring the lines between art and politics. With their actions, Le Nemesiache collectively imagined how the worlds of art and literature could engender forms of protest within broader women’s liberation struggles in Italy at the time. Le Nemesiache were/are: Lina Mangiacapre (NEMESI), Teresa Mangiacapra (NIOBE), Silvana Campese (MEDEA), Fausta Base, Conni Capobianco (NAUSICAA), Maria Matteucci (MAREA), Bruna Felletti (KARMA), Claudia Aglione (Elena), Aracne, Aretusa, Astrea, Camilla, Cassandra, Coca-Dafne, Elsa/Circe, Eco, Ilizia, Ippolita, Karma, Tike, Adele, Angela, Angela Rosa, Anna, Anna N., Antonella, Carmen, Caroline, Chantal, Cicci, Cinzia, Caterina, Catherine, Consuelo, Cosima, Despina, Dina, Dolores, Elisabeth, Elisabetta, Elsa M., Esther, Gianni, Giuliana, Giuditta, Gloria, Isabel, Laura, Lilly, Lucia, Lucia M., Luisita, Lydia, Maria, Marie Laurence, Matilde, Monica, Nadia, Nazarena, Rita, Rosalba, Rosella, Rossana, Rossella, Sabine, Tonia, Vittoria.The event is part of Vibrant Natures. On Telluric Cosmologies, a program curated by Guido Santandrea e Marianna Vecellio, organized in partnership between Almanac, Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, and Orti Generali. Vibrant Natures. On Telluric Cosmologies is supported by Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo, Fondazione CRT, and Regione Piemonte.