Seminários Interartes e Intermédia #3: "Draw Like a Girl: Mapping Entanglements of Comics Art and Activism in the Italian Fight Against Gender Violence"
The third session of Seminários Interartes & Intermédia (5th ed.) will take place on Tuesday, November 15th.
In this session, Nicoletta Mandolini, a postdoctoral fellow at Universidade do Minho, is giving a talk entitled “Draw Like a Girl: Mapping Entanglements of Comics Art and Activism in the Italian Fight Against Gender Violence” (abstract below).
Respondent: Pedro Moura (ESAD-Caldas da Rainha / AR.CO).
Place and time: Sala C046; 15:00–16:30.
Abstract:
Draw Like a Girl: Mapping Entanglements of Comics Art and Activism in the Italian Fight Against Gender Violence
Since the beginning of the new millennium, the denunciation of gender-based violence has become widespread in Italy (Romito 2005, 1-2). Capitalising on the groundbreaking work of feminist movements of the 1970s and 1980s as well as on the influence of international feminist campaigns (e.g. Ni una menos; #MeToo), a significant number of contemporary Italian collectives and networks have succeeded in bringing to the attention of mainstream media the issues of femicide, domestic abuse, rape and denied reproductive rights.
Art-activist practices have played a crucial role in this process of mainstreaming and, among these, the use of graphic narratives has proved particularly prolific. Creative interventions involving graphic narratives include the campaigns promoted by the women shelter Lucha y Siesta, where superhero comics are employed to challenge gender violence at a symbolic level. Other examples are the participative vignettes promoted by the feminist network Non una di meno to give voice to women’s experiences of obstetric violence and the production of graphic novels, Via del Gambero 77 (2016) and Fai rumore (2021), by a women’s shelter in Modena and by a collective against sexual harassment in the Italian comics industry (Moleste) respectively.
The talk will present the results of a mapping and analysis of the rich production of Italian comics-based art-activism with the aim of understanding how the comics medium influences the discourse on gender violence and how, in turn, artivism against sexist abuse affects the comics medium and contributes to its innovation.
