Silvia Giambrone
b. 1981, Italy
With a practice that encompasses performance, installation, photography, sculpture and sound, Silvia Giambrone explores contemporary body politics, with a particular focus on violence against women, both physical and phycological. Employing an almost ethnographic approach, Giambrone casts a critical gaze on the traditional domestic environment and excavates the inherent yet often hidden power dynamics between men and women. By addressing the social taboo of domestic violence, Giambrone positions herself next to a long line of historical feminists – from Helen Chadwick and Judy Chicago to Margaret Harrison, Linder and Gina Pane – who used art as a vehicle to uproot inequality within the household and workplace and to challenge social stereotypes associated with women and confront fixed identities. Like these seminal figures, Giambrone magnifies a deeper, more insidious thread of the female condition. Heavily influenced by the writer Carla Lonzi, who together with Carla Accardi formed one of the most radical Feminist Movements in Italy in the late 1970s, Giambrone digs into the heavily shrouded arena of violence, attempting to understand and unearth humanity’s tendency towards brutality whilst simultaneously calling into question its domestication and normalisation.
Giambrone lives and works between Rome and London. Her work has featured in numerous group exhibitions around the world, including Young Italians 1968 – 2018 at the Italian Institute of Culture, New York, NY, USA (2018); Il corpo è un indumento fragile, curated by Paola Ugolini, Museo del Novecento, Florence, Italy (2018); Time is out of Joint, National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rome, Italy (2017); W. Women in Italian Design, IX Triennale Design Museum, Milan, Italy (2016); and Diversi Muri: An Homage to NOF4, Swiss Institute of Contemporary Art, Rome, Italy (2014). Solo exhibitions have been held at the Rossini Foundation, Briosco, Italy (2018); Italienisches Kulturinstitut, Cologne, Germany (2015); National Museum of M. K. Čiurlionis, Kaunas, Lithuania (2015); and MAR Museum, Ravenna, Italy (2013). In 2019, she was awarded the prestigious VAF Prize, awarded by the German Foundation to Italian artists under the age of 40. In 2021 she collaborated with Dior AW 2021-2022 collection, creating the exclusive installation 'Hall of Shadows' at the Palace of Versailles.
Visit the artist's website at www.silviagiambrone.com