EXHIBITION AT FSRR

L’amavo troppo e le ho sparato
(I loved her too much and I shot her)
Traces from a workshop by Irene Pittatore
in collaboration with trainer Isabelle Demangeat,
curator Tea Taramino and the project staff

Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo
2 February – 9 March 2023
Bookshop area

Five shots to the face and hands. I loved her too much and I shot her is an expression that recalls the statement made to the police, in 1933 in Turin, by the ex-lover and aggressor of a woman who had decided to break off their relationship: “Le volevo troppo bene e ho sparato” (La Stampa della Sera, March 3rd 1933 – issue 53, page 2. The gunshots of a passionate man).

Excerpts from articles and international trials for domestic violence and feminicide since 1848 bring to light, in fragments, the voices of abused women, of their aggressors and of witnesses of the events, revealing a frightening topicality and recurrence of actions, justifying speeches towards aggressors and denigrating towards women. Printed on large fabrics with a cross-stitch typeface, these testimonies became the basis for a collective, itinerant embroidery project, the first stage of which took place on January 28th 2023 at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Italy.

During the workshop, the participants left their crosses on fabrics whose testimonies resonated with their own direct experience of life and work. Embroidery becomes a means of measuring the spread of the everyday experience of gender-based violence. The documents on display are traces of a shared action of awareness, imagination and struggle against unequal and patriarchal cultural paradigms, in an attempt to trace, even visually, alternatives and escape routes.

Each of the embroidered canvases will introduce and illustrate a chapter of the artist’s notebook L’amavo troppo e le ho sparato, a transmedia and bilingual publication, published by Capovolte, dedicated to male and female readers aged 12 and over and to educational personnel working against violence. The booklet aims to promote the recognition of the cultural roots of gender-based violence and its manifestations, in order to learn how to counter it. It is an artistic training and support tool for analysing gender roles and the imagery associated with masculinity, which carries with it social assignments and injunctions in which violence is rarely questioned, except when it becomes a crime.

Together with the embroidered fabrics, the accessories designed by Irene Pittatore for the project’s sponsors and supporters is on display. Small reminders – for pockets or desks – not to let our guard down: a postcard, to spread awareness about the deep roots of gender violence; a rubber and socks, to help consume and trample the violence that also informs our language.