CAROL RAMA

A feminist icon and one of the most prolific and persistent female artists of her time, the late Carol Rama was ignored by the upper echelons of the art sector for most of her life, only to receive widespread recognition in her 80s. It’s a story we’ve heard before, and it adds poignancy to the exhibition Carol Rama. Spazio piu che tempo ( Carol Rama. Space even more than time) at the Palazzo Ca’Nova on the Grand Canal. Curated by Maria Cristina Mundici and Raffaella Roddolo, members of the Scientific Committee of the Archivio Carol Rama, the show explores the many stages and developments of Rama’s artistic career through 30 works, with particular focus on her unique command of composition. Self-taught, Rama began painting in the 1930s as a means of dealing with family tragedies (her mother was institutionalised and her father took his own life when she was 12). She developed a figurative aesthetic that was both boisterous and wild. Rama’s creative outpouring turned to the exploration of sexuality and desire, the female body and lustfulness, but also abstraction and assemblage in the vein of Arte Povera. It’s hard to pin Rama down to one spot, which is why her work is still so fresh and current today. Beyond the canon and outside codes of categorisation, the artist’s practice abandons all binaries, offering instead a multifaceted and complex representation of desire, sacrifice, repression, and liberation.