(S)HE DEVIL, the 13th edition of the SHE DEVIL exhibition, opens at Studio Stefania Miscetti tomorrow, 19 March, and continues until 24 May 2024. This year sees the exhibition – exceptionally – featuring a selection of work produced exclusively by male artists. United by their ability to provide insights and perspectives, these works consider patriarchy in its role as a relational system of power and domination.
The polyphonic conversation that Stefania Miscetti and her curatorial team have devised for this edition began in the second half of 2022, when patriarchy was not yet a recurring feature of public discourse in Italy. The choice was partly the result of the news and images coming out of the protests in Iran at the time, notably in terms of the large-scale, collective dimension they had acquired. This edition therefore engages with possible practices of male self-awareness, and their resulting stances and responsibilities with regard to violence (whether perpetrated or experienced).
To quote Francesca Pasini (who in turn refers to Lia Cigarini’s concept of ‘fratrie’): now that we are experiencing the “collapse of the patriarchal symbolic order”, men must “investigate their own difference, and from there come to terms with an Other outside of their own selves. This is the new task to correct ‘the present disorder’, and it is not only up to women.” In this sense, in spite of the different narrative point of view – provided, for the first time, by the male gaze – SHE DEVIL reaffirms its conceptual coherence with themes and curatorial choices that are inevitably and intrinsically related to the repercussions of the patriarchal system on the female world. As a result, the structural, social, political and economic aspects of hegemonic masculinity – not only as a historical and cultural construct, but also as a set of practices that have allowed the perpetration of coercion and oppression – are highlighted and questioned through the video form.
Come da tradizione, l’edizione di quest’anno trova il suo spirito guida nella ricerca di un artista di fama internazionale, quest’anno l’artista Alfredo Jaar, che in qualità di “Good Father” dell’edizione presenta l’opera video del 1996 A Short Film on Monstrosity.
As is traditional, this year’s edition draws its guiding spirit from the work of an internationally renowned practitioner. The artist chosen as the “Good Father” of this edition is Alfredo Jaar, whose 1996 video piece A Short Film on Monstrosity will be featured.
A new book, published by CURA will also celebrate the last two editions of SHE DEVIL, both of which have ‘strayed’ from the format’s usual conventions (the twelfth edition embraced the notion of fluidity). This volume will build on and extend the work of the previous one, also published by CURA, which was presented at MAXXI in 2019. The new book will be launched in spring 2024 at the Basement space in Rome.
(S)HE DEVIL 13, Studio Stefania Miscetti, Rome, 20.03 – 24.05.2024
SHE DEVIL was founded in 2006, based on an idea of Stefania Miscetti’s. The exhibition involves both Italian and international artists and curators, ranging from emerging talents to highly acclaimed practitioners. The various works and different critical perspectives coexist within a polyphonic discourse, in which a multiplicity of feminine worlds and visions emerges.
SHE DEVIL is the name of a heroine in the Marvel Comics universe, Shanna the She Devil, and the title of the famous 1989 film by Susan Seidelman.
In this context, it serves as a playful reference to the diabolical and bizarre spirit with which artistic experience investigates day-to-day life. In line with previous editions, the videos represent female viewpoints and place the various fields of video art practice in direct contrast to one another. The purpose of the initiative is to articulate a collective consciousness – at times with humour, at times with sober realism – on subjects as diverse as female identity, the body as a repository of representation and meaning, and the universal dimensions of personal experience – even when the artist’s own intimate world is at the forefront of their work.
The first two editions, in 2006 and 2007, featured four and six curators respectively (and the same number of artists) but from the third edition onwards, in 2009, Stefania Miscetti decided to get more curators involved. The success of the initiative was confirmed that year with a special international edition held at the MNAC, National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, Romania. In 2010, after the project’s fourth edition, SHE DEVIL was selected for The Madness of Art exhibition at the Ravello Festival. The fifth edition took place in the summer of 2011 at MACRO, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome. In 2014, the sixth edition received extensive media coverage. In 2015, the seventh edition was organized in Rome, together with SHE DEVIL on Tour, presented at the Palazzo Primavera in Terni (Italy) and the Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast (UK). The eighth edition was held in 2016, in addition to the SHE DEVIL Leipziger Edition: Home, at Galerie KUB in Leipzig, Germany. In 2017, SHE DEVIL landed in Lithuania, at the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius, with the ninth edition taking place in its Studio. In 2018 the tenth edition was held at the Gallery, with great selections from it also presented at the National Institute of Graphics, Rome, and the Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato. In 2019, as well as the eleventh edition, a catalogue outlining the project and its history was presented at the MAXXI Museum, published by CURA. editions. The twelfth edition, S_HE DEVIL, was held in 2021 at MAXXI’s video gallery, and in 2022 at the Studio Miscetti. In 2023, a special edition of SHE DEVIL took place at the MUNTREF Museo de Artes Visuales in Buenos Aires, as part of the fourth edition of the international biennial of contemporary art BIENALSUR, during which over 50 videos from past editions were showcased alongside an original selection of Argentinian work.
