ArtsLife: 'Woman, Life, Freedom.' Eleonora Gugliotta 'Brings' Masha Amini to the Architecture Biennale
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The artist pays tribute to Mahsa Amini in the project Ecologia (A)sociale (Social (A)Ecology), part of Biennale Sessions presented in Mestre.
17 September 2022: Mahsa Amini is killed by Iran’s morality police for failing to comply with the regime’s dress code. A sustained protest begins, involving all social strata of the country in support of Iranian women’s freedom of expression. The reaction of the Islamic regime is brutal, ignoring both international law and the very constitution the regime itself wrote more than forty years ago. On 12 November, 227 members of the Iranian Parliament call on the judiciary to issue death sentences for those arrested. In 2022 alone, 580 people were executed, though this figure is likely incomplete. In 2023, nearly 200 people had already been executed by Iran, significantly more than during the same period the previous year.
To this must be added rape and other aberrant and inhumane acts carried out by law enforcement forces, which reportedly are even drugged in order to act with such violence. Iran is not the “Islamic Republic”; Iranians are not Islamic extremists. Iranians represent excellence in scientific and technical fields, grounding their pride and culture in ancient Persia as heirs to the principles of human rights established by Cyrus the Great a thousand years before the Magna Carta and before the Roman Republic. Many are calling for radical change: no to the Islamic regime, yes to a genuine secular democracy.
Spoglie (Spoils), Iran
The protests gave rise to the slogan WOMAN, LIFE, FREEDOM. Often mistakenly referred to as “the slogan of Iranian women,” it actually originated within the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) and has a long history of resistance. Jin, Jiyan, Azadî has echoed around the world on several occasions: when the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) fought and defeated ISIS; when the Kurdish women’s movement protested against femicide, war, and occupation; and when Kurdish revolutionaries were murdered by the state. While this slogan is once again being heard everywhere, the ongoing attacks against the Kurdish people and against the movement that coined it continue and largely go unnoticed.
In May 2023, Eleonora Gugliotta presented Spoglie, Iran (Spoils, Iran) at the Sozzani Foundation in Milan, a project initiated shortly after the protests began. The work is the result of a performance carried out at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts as part of Quaderni di Scultura, curated by Donata Lazzarini, Cristina Camino, Cecilia Guida, Roberto Galeotti, and Massimo Mazzone. Together with former and current Brera students, who donated locks of their hair to create a map of Iran, Gugliotta employed the same technique used to create other places of our Earth in her series Spoglie (Spoils), connected to the performative cycle Rito funebre alla Terra (Funeral Rite for the Earth).
Parco Aperto
The performance Donna Vita Libertà (Woman, Life, Freedom) was recreated for the Venice Architecture Biennale’s Biennale Sessions: Parco Aperto > Ecologia (A)sociale , with the participation of the public and using hair collected during awareness initiatives promoted by the artist in April and May 2023 at the Enrico De Nicola High School of Fine Arts in Sesto San Giovanni and the Caravaggio High School of Fine Arts in Milan. These initiatives also included a video interview, produced by the artist in collaboration with students from NABA, with Iranian artist and activist Mahnaz Ekhtiary, who lives and works in Milan. Eleonora Gugliotta also collaborated with Non Una Di Meno Milano in promoting performances such as El Violador Eres Tú, presented at Piazza del Duomo in Milan in 2020.
by Salome Rodriguez
