Gestural Disruptions: Conjuring Resonance in Chiara Fumai’s I Did Not Say or Mean “Warning”

Abstract

In 2013, artist Chiara Fumai performed I Did Not Say or Mean “Warning” at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice, Italy, a cultural institution housing an archive and art collection of mainly Baroque and Rococo paintings. Acting as a guide, Fumai led visitors on a tour of artworks by celebrated male artists, focusing her attention on the women depicted and largely left out of the historical record. As though provoked by their erasure, the spirit of an Italian anarcho-feminist of the 1970s possesses the artist, giving voice to the silenced women confined to the canvas. The fragmented message, delivered in pieces throughout the performance, is communicated in part through sign language used exclusively to communicate terms of aggression and violence. This text examines the significance of Fumai’s mobilization of channeled oral messages, gesture, and active muteness triggered by a visual record of women’s exclusion from the public sphere. Fumai’s use of sign language formally mirrors and rebels against the deafening absence of women’s voices in history, while her channeling of a spirit emanating from an Italian feminist past forges relationships of resonance between women across temporal divides.