by Eleonora Santanni
and Serena Gallorini
edited by Elisabetta Rizzuto
in collaboration with Marco Mozzo
VIA DELLA PETRAIA, 40 – FLORENCE
Event within the calendar of the Festival
l’eredità delle donne off
“The Headless. Women beyond pain” is a site-specific project realized for the Villa Medicea, UNESCO Heritage Site since 2013, that for the first time opens its spaces to contemporary art.
The exposed artworks derive from an autobiographical experience of Eleonora Santanni linked to illness and the loss of a part of her body, her breast, caused by cancer.
The visitors are surrounded by a context of great artistic value comprehensive of installations, sculptures in plastic materials, matter paintings, and digital prints.
They are involved in an intense feminine dialogue, in particular with Giambologna’s magnificent Venus Fiorenza, a symbol of the beauty and the strength of the city of Florence and housed on the noble floor of the building.
The western open gallery, in the room that leads to Venus Fiorenza’s study, contains a wide variety of artworks, digital prints, and installations rich of inspiration and sensations which mix different techniques and genres. Santanni reinterprets Venus Fiorenza as an extra-ordinary icon, symbol, and expression of new values, through a sort of itinerary of different stages made of digital compositions, combinations and irreverent revisited versions of the statue. Her artwork was inspired by street art, pop art, advertisement, and fashion. It uses the bronze statue of the Flemish artist Giambologna as the main character and transforms it into the muse and the aesthetic subject of the project The Headless.
Venus With No Ifs Or B… Reast
Acrylic and multi-material collage on canvas
70 x 100 cm
2019
Fiorenza The Headless
Print on photo paper
70 x 100 cm
2019
Venus With No Ifs Or B…Reast
Print on photo paper
70 x 100 cm
2019
There’s No Rose Without A Thorn
Print on photo paper
70 x 100 cm
2019
Blondie Fiorenza
Print on photo paper
70 x 100 cm
2019
VenusVogue
Print on photo paper
70 x 100 cm
2019
The idea of the project The Headless started with the reflection on the woman’s body in all its forms, as an aesthetic simulacrum or as focus of media interests, as the main subject and, at the same time, object in our current communities.
The Headless represent women’s bodies scarred by traumatic events and diseases, aware of the fact that currently, we experience a void, an intrinsic inability in the contemporary collective consciousness of giving back an image to these bodies that were ill and became reborn.
Impulsive, mindless, carefree, thoughtless and reluctant to rules, in one word: “headless”. The women represented by Eleonora Santanni, with the photographic support of Serena Gallorini, elaborate a new vision of themselves through an image of great emotional and visual impact, along with irony and wit. The Headless encourage to abandon fear and ideal aesthetic models, to destroy social constructs, to step through the door in order to open up completely and be free to regain one’s own femininity.
The Headless realized by Santanni and Gallorini go beyond current aesthetic standards and can be described as “Contemporary Venuses” able to show their scars as badges of honor, as symbols of the successful fight for life, love, and beauty.
Eredità delle Donne is a Festival directed by Serena Dandini and realized by Elastica and the Cr Firenze Foundation, designed to re-read the artistic and cultural heritage of Florence and our country with the intention of restoring light to the role played over the centuries by the women scientists and artists, writers and pioneers of all fields of knowledge, but not always recognized like their male colleagues.
For three days Florence becomes the city of women between meetings, readings, guided tours, previews and tributes to brave female personalities that in general have left for the progress of our society and therefore of humanity. All in the name of an illustrious Florentine: the Electress Palatine: Anna Maria Luisa de ’Medici.
Not only do you watch this festival in the past, because there are still many challenges for women around the world. For gender equality, but also and above all for the rights of all, against all discrimination, for the health of humanity and not for that of the planet.
ELEONORA SANTANNI
ele.santanni@gmail.com
