GIULIA ANDREANI

Andreani centres this exhibition around several themes. The first of these comprises a group of works which reflect on the male tradition in art as the background against which any reception of a young painter takes place. One of these is Female gaze, 2021, a portrait of German film director Leni Riefenstahl, superficially emancipated and prominent in her artistic endeavours, but essentially dependent on her following and representing the views of a fascist dictatorship. The large canvas Like a girl in a peep show, 2021, plays on the differing perspectives of the male artistic gaze and on Andreani’s position to this, not only as a painter, but as a woman and as a feminist. She also emphasises the reflected gaze of the viewers who bring their own individual and again differing perspectives to the work. While her work is about perception and reception, the latter especially is not always predictable and will changeover the course of time. On this, Andreani quotes Algerian feminist lawyer Wassyla Tamzali, who explains: ‘If the past comes back to us, it is because of the present’.

Another thread includes two portraits of Franca Viola, 2021, a youngSicilian who in 1966 refused to enter into a ‘rehabilitating marriage’ with her rapist, thereby becoming an important figure in Italian legislative history. Here, marriage is shown to be a patriarchal concept even within quite recent European history, covering for violence against women.Following on from there, we encounter ideas of maternity, ranging from the status bestowed on females in society through becoming mothers, to