Ti ho detto chi sei
Self-portrait in plaster · 2026 · 30x85cm
The sculpture aims to represent the verbal violence inflicted on women through a vision that reduces them to objects, stripping them of their individuality. The reference is to the male-dominated notion that women are naturally destined for domestic space and housework, a notion that does not require beatings to assert itself, but is asserted through words, judgments, impositions, and expectations repeated over time. The work therefore denounces an invisible and normalized form of violence, which operates through language and culture, relegating women to a function and erasing their human complexity. The filaments of the mop, arranged like a mass of hair, visually recall Medusa's snakes, creating a formal reference to mythological iconography. The mop's staff takes on a dual symbolic meaning. On the one hand, it retains its concrete function as a cleaning tool, traditionally associated, in patriarchal culture, with the female figure and her relegation to domestic space. On the other hand, it evokes the imagery of the witch and the Befana, figures with whom the broomstick is historically associated. In the sculpture, however, the mace is not physically present. Its absence is not a simple formal omission, but a symbolic choice: the woman is deprived of the very thing that, in the witch's imagination, would allow her to fly. She is therefore deprived of the possibility of elevation and with it of freedom, of autonomy. Moreover, witches were not just folkloristic caricatures, but women affected by real and systemic violence, culminating in persecution and burnings. The alleged imbeddedness of the mace in the skull suggests how these narratives, between ridicule and punishment, passed down and internalized, penetrate the mind to the point of defining identity and imposed limits.