T For Tomaso: Breaking Down the Radical Work Of Feminist Tomaso Binga
“Io e me”, 1976
“My body is also the body of the word”
Tomaso Binga is the male pseudonym that Bianca Pucciarelli Menna (Salerno ,1931) chose to make her entrance into the art world in the 60s. Tomaso. She had no choice but to hide behind such a masculine name due to all the the difficulties that women encountered in that day and age, among other male artists. The Italian poet and artist made an entire persona out of it, by go against the gender norms that were settled at the time and defying them the uneasy challenges and restrictions of gender.
Binga’s oeuvre is characterised by a permanent interest in women emancipation and social causes.
In an effort to re-write the role of women in Scrittura Vivente (1976), the artist reproduces letters–the pillars of communication– with the shape of her very own body, giving women a real voice and power.
Binga’s artwork displayed in Dior’s FW19 Show “Sisterhood”
Tomaso Binga often represents and uses her naked body not as a token of perfection apt for idolisation, but rather as a naturally imperfect yet ever more powerful mean of expression. “My body is also the body of the word,” says the artist, because as art critic Stefania Zuliani has pointed out in the past, Tomaso Binga is a “total poet who with inflexible exuberance shuns the restrictions of gender, and seeks above all things to belong to the world, constructing a flexible alphabet of her own made up of signs and gestures, sounds, accents and irreverent inventions, working precisely on the body.” She therefore starts from her own body to identify it as a universal one–in her words– “the artist is not a man nor a woman but a person”.
Mater (or Litanie Lauretane, 1976) arises from the effort to free women from the commonly held labels the church had confined them to. The work, which was originally accompanied by a series of Litanie –Catholic chants to invoke the mercy of Mother, Mater, Mary–conveys criticism towards the social establishment and sparks discussion on a topic that still today offers fertile ground for confrontation.
“Mater”, 1976
Her research also comprises the field of sound performance, and poetry; the distinct value she attributes timbre and rhythm and the ironic wordplay she uses contribute to making her work desecrating and impactful.
At the opening of “A Silenced Victory” at Mimosa House in 2019, she recited a poem which started with: “A blameful condition detonates every feminist gentlemen harassing…”: with the first word starting with an A and the last one with a Z, Binga set out to take the participants through an alphabetical journey which would have made them critically approach the issue addressed.
Quite literally, Georgia O’Keeffe’s idea that “to create one’s own world takes courage” finds a specific meaning in Binga’s work, as she successfully strives to create new ways of seeing about the role of women. Not through prêt-à-porter feminism but with an effective work that with a tinge of irony succeeds in questioning commonly held, yet not up-with-the-time assumptions. In fact, when the artist married the character of Tomaso Binga in “Oggi Spose” (1977), she conveyed a great message of hope by showing that a women had acquired all the features that had until then been associated to men.
“Oggi spose”, 1977