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Essay

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De-linking Women and Nature: Care Work as a Subject of Art at the 1978 Venice Biennale

Maria Bremer

Published online:

15 Nov 2024

Abstract

Abstract

This essay revisits the 1978 Venice Biennale, titled From Nature to Art, from Art to Nature, to discuss the “gender neutral” use of both notions within the exhibition’s official discourse at the time. Against the backdrop of the 1970s, amid the momentum of second-wave feminism, initiatives concomitant to the exhibition discerned and challenged the persisting, though implicit, gendered implications of both art and nature, complicating the Biennale’s main narrative. These initiatives included self-organized shows by feminist collectives, namely the Gruppo Femminista Immagine from Varese and Donne/Immagine/Creatività from Naples. Informed by a Marxist perspective, both exhibitions, I argue, engaged with reproductive labor in original ways to contest and dismantle traditional assumptions of an inherent connection between women and nature.

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Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte Issues

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