Representation and Identity in Contemporary Women Artists’ Video, by Laura Leuzzi.
Department of History Anthropology Religions Art History Media and Performing Arts, Sapienza University of Rome, 00185 Roma, Italy
This essay is an initial study that examines selected contemporary video artworks addressing identity and representation by contemporary Italian women artists. The author shows how these women artists seek to avoid the objectification and sanitisation of the traditional iconographies involving women in patriarchal Catholic systems. Selected works by Elisabetta Di Sopra, Francesca Fini, and Mariateresa Sartori are discussed by comparing elements from works by earlier generations of feminist video artists, such as Pipilotti Rist, Elaine Shemilt, and Catherine Elwes. Drawing on theories of both video and feminist art, this article examines how the development of a new aesthetic in early women’s video art practice in the 1970s and 1980s is still relevant to the task of critically examining and assessing aesthetics in video today, and how video remains a key tool used to experiment with the remediation of women’s representation and identity.
