S_HE DEVIL 12 + MAXXI selection, MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo , 8-13 June 2021

STUDIO STEFANIA MISCETTI is proud to present S_HE DEVIL 12, the twelfth edition of the video art exhibition SHE DEVIL, this year realised in collaboration with MAXXI, the National Museum of 21st Century Arts, which will host it in its videogallery. S_HE DEVIL will open on Tuesday 8 June at 18:00 with an inaugural talk introduced by Eleonora Farina with Dobrila Denegri, curator and art historian, and Cristiana Perrella, director of Centro Pecci in Prato, thus giving voice to the many women artists and curators who for more than ten years have animated this collective project.

S_HE DEVIL 12

artists | curators

MAXXI selection | curated by Eleonora Farina

artists | curators

Until Sunday 13 June, during the museum’s opening hours (11 am – 7 pm), the new edition of the exhibition will be accompanied by the MAXXI selection curated by Eleonora Farina, MAXXI Art curator, a previously unseen selection of video works presented in past editions of SHE DEVIL.

S_HE DEVIL is born of the desire to offer as faithful a picture as possible of the complex reality we’re living in. At the same time, it aspires to paint a picture of how regrettably binary, static and reductive conceptual frameworks may be overcome.

Starting from a consideration of queer art and the concept of gender, this edition seeks to examine how it is precisely those process of contamination, hybridisation and métissage that have defined the landscape of contemporary practice today.

In keeping with this aim, and for the first time in the exhibition’s history, the curatorial team has selected works by international artists of all genders, both established and emerging. By doing so, they have mapped out a journey that explores the outcomes and facets of that practice and its processes, taking in fields as distinct and remote as sociology, biology and technology. Therein how a consideration of fluid identities becomes a reflection on the fluidity of the times we’re living in – a period undoubtedly bound up with the uncertainties, acceleration and ubiquity promised by technology – but which we have also interpreted as a specific attitude to existence: one that has the ability to adapt, as well as the strength to overwhelm and determine new consequences, like a river bursting its banks.

Internationally acclaimed artist Yoko Ono is ‘godmother’ to this edition, with her piece SPACE TRANSFORMERS. The work is part of Instruction Pieces, a series the artist has been working on since the 1960s, in which each creation is structured in three indivisible parts – a concept, an object and a piece to be made.

The installation is composed of a series of small, letterpress-printed cards available to the visitor, each of which features, black on white, the text that gives the work its title. The cards are an invitation; in the words of the artist, they encourage us to “build in our own minds” a specific place where each of us, as we travel through space and time, is entirely conscious of being able to undergo our own transformation.

In addition, the MAXXI selection, curated by Eleonora Farina, narrates fifteen years of the history of SHE DEVIL through an excursus of 15 video works presented in the previous editions. A collective project that, exhibition after exhibition, behind make-up, dresses, stilettos and red lipstick, among collective masks and interior disguises, has represented the multiplicity of women, the complexity of contemporary relationships and, lastly, the marvellous versatility of the human being.

In keeping with the tradition of SHE DEVIL, the godmother of the MAXXI selection is Elaine Shemilt with the video performance Doppelgänger from 1979-81.

SHE DEVIL is the name of a heroine in the Marvel Comics universe, Shanna the She Devil, and title of the famous film from 1989 by Susan Seidelman. In this circumstance it alludes in a playful way to the diabolical and bizarre spirit with which artistic experience investigates day-to-day life. In continuity with the previous editions of the program, the videos represent female viewpoints and place the various fields of video art research in direct contrast to one another. The purpose of the initiative is to stress, at times using irony, at times realism, the collective consciousness on themes such as female identity, the body as repository of representation and meaning, and personal experiences on universal dimensions, even when the very intimacy of the artists is at the forefront of their works.

SHE DEVIL was founded in 2006 thanks to an idea of Stefania Miscetti, and involves artists and curators, both Italian and international, from emerging young talents to highly acclaimed personalities. The various works and different critical perspectives coexist within a discourse of many voices, in which the multiplicity of feminine worlds and visions emerges. After the first two editions, in 2006 and in 2007, respectively with four and six curators (and the same number of artists), since 2009, with the third edition, Stefania Miscetti has decided to get more curators involved. The success of the initiative was confirmed that year by a special international edition held at the MNAC, National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, Romania. In 2010, after the fourth edition of the project, SHE DEVIL was selected for the show The Madness of Art at the Ravello Festival. The fifth edition of the project took place in the summer of 2011 at MACRO, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome. In 2014 the sixth edition received extensive media coverage. In 2015, it was organized the seventh edition in Rome and the SHE DEVIL on Tour at Palazzo Primavera, in Terni (Italy) and at Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast (UK). The eighth edition and SHE DEVIL. Leipziger Edition: Home, at Galerie KUB were held in 2016. In 2017, SHE DEVIL landed in Lithuania, at National Gallery of Art, in Vilnius and the ninth edition took place at the Studio. In 2018, tenth edition was held at the Gallery and great selections were presented at National Institute of Graphics, Rome, and at Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato. In 2019, as well as the eleventh edition, the catalogue narrating the history of the project was presented at MAXXI Museum, published by CURA. editions.

Catalogue narrating the history of the project 2019