Straordinarie
2021-2023
Conceived and curated by Renata Ferri
Photograhpy by Ilaria Magliocchetti Lombi
Patriarchy still fuels old and new gender stereotypes that define women’s lives, shaping their desires and limiting their freedom, while justifying both physical and psychological violence. The body thus takes on a political meaning — a site of new questions and difficult reckonings that concern all women, in this and in other worlds: changing latitude only changes the degree of oppression.
Straordinarie challenges gender stereotypes by transforming the paradigm of the woman-as-victim into a cultural and political model of reference. Protagonists of our present, the women portrayed have accepted the invitation to stage their photographic portrait, making this project a unified body of faces and voices — a tapestry of memories, confidences, and dedications.
A worn grey cloth and the artifice of light delineated a room, an intimate space where, through Ilaria Magliocchetti Lombi’s photography, we brought to life a vortex of relationships.
Creating Straordinarie required more than two years of research, contacts, filming, and interviews. During this time — marked by global tragedies — Michela Murgia, who more than anyone else exposed and dismantled gender stereotypes, passed away. Yet her thought and her words, now more necessary than ever, continue to shake and illuminate our consciences.
The project was born within Terre des Hommes’ #indifesa campaign, with the aim of revealing the multitude of possibilities each of us holds, reweaving a thread that has never truly been broken — a thread that runs from the demands of feminist thought to contemporary transfeminism, where gender itself becomes the subject of discourse.
Straordinarie is an invitation to young women and men to follow the flow of words and images — to observe, listen, and read the emotional investigation at the heart of this collective story.
Curatorial text by Renata Ferri
The exhibition was on view at the MAXXI Museum in Rome in 2023 and at the Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan in 2024.
Book credits:
Curated by Renata Ferri
Design by Emiliano Biondelli
Image toning by Paolo Lecca
Published by Silvana Editoriale
Printed in January 2024
248 Pages
24x30 cm
Hard cover
This presentation features a selection of the 110 portraits from Straordinarie.
Installation views of the Milan exhibition © Gabriele Carnovale and Alessandro di Palma
