Le Nemesiache: Reclaiming Mythological Rituals

English / Italian

Texts by Chiara Bottici, Federica Bueti, Cairo Clarke, Sonia D’Alto, Giulia Damiani, Giusi Palomba, Imma Tralli e Roberto Pontecorvo – Marea Art Project, Elvira Vannini, Giovanna Zapperi, Arnisa Zeqo

Le Nemesiache: Reclaiming Mythological Rituals is the first monograph dedicated to the Neapolitan feminist and pacifist artists’ group. Co-founded in 1970 by the multidisciplinary and visionary artist and writer Lina Mangiacapre, Le Nemesiache fostered an experimental artistic practice and a way of being in the world rooted in feminism, mythology, folktales, sci-fi, and radical imagination, while also introducing “transfeminism” in the early ’80s. Throughout their long-lasting practice spanning several decades, the group retrieved an androgynous mythosophy to transcend art as mere representation and challenge the feminine as a modern identity category. Their distinct transformative approach within both Italian and Western feminist art history led not only to the emergence of an interdisciplinary practice—encompassing film, performance, writing, rituals, poetry, music, collage, costumes, protests, and conferences—but also the creation of a new political language, grounded in cosmological creativity and justice through mythological rituals.

Unpublished documents, images, photographs, and manifestos about the group are accompanied by new creative, political, and historical contributions, evoking the collective joy of Le Nemesiache’s history so as to bring a sense of myth back into the world, rewriting and embodying it anew.