Benni Bosetto
"Il codice delle mura bagnate"

This vernacular expression, which tells of a discomfort, an inadequacy, a constraint, inspired Tomaso Binga in 1976 when, inside a private home in Rome, she created the performance Carta da parato. The artist papered the walls with wallpaper on which she writes words that, extrapolated from the contexts of use, are desemantized, flow on the surface and fill the space. The artist declaims, wearing a dress made of the same material, <<I am a paper>>. It is a work that, embracing the feminism of the 1970s, denounces gender inequality, the subordinate position of women who experience the constraint of being relegated to the domestic environment, the dwelling, which becomes a prison.

Just as Binga, in ll codice delle mura bagnate, Benni Bosetto covers the walls of a former private Milanese apartment of the 1900s with her paper. Just as Binga, she creates a language, a code, made up of chasing figures. This time, however, instead of words, it is drawing that is the protagonist. Instead of concepts, gestures. Instead of the head, it is the hand that generates fluid, almost ejaculate forms that become the protagonists on the papers. Papers that, while reminiscent of the preparatory phase of posting, at the same time evoke a stripping away, a laying bare of space that, like an extension of the body (of the artist?), opens to receive and give. “All the muscles of the body ready for mating,” sang Franco Battiato in Sentimento nuevo. These are expressive faces, breasts, phalluses, naked bodies. Benni Bosetto’s domestic environment becomes an open place of inquiry and discovery, where one can experience one’s own intimacy. This wallpaper is no longer the background on which to blend, in which to disappear, but rather a manifesto of liberation. The body, the human being, after all, is always at the center of Benni Bosetto’s artistic research, who in her practice gives life to scenes, mixing drawing, sculpture, installation and performance, representations propped up by her personal archive of anthropological and literary references, which pervade the space and which, as in this case, flourish on the walls.

Benni Bosetto undertakes this exploration at Spazio Lima in two stages.
In the first, she “prepares” the space, sets up the walls to accommodate what is to come. The second appointment, in January 2024, will complete the project with an all-new installation.
In continuity and in conjunction with Il codice delle mura bagnate for Milano Drawing Week, the exhibition Slippery Orchid, in the private apartment in Milan of Emanuela Campoli (Emanuela Campoli Gallery) continues and enriches the reflection on a domestic environment that is read and interpreted as the extension of the body of those who inhabit it, an organism that changes and grows with those who live in it.

Benni Bosetto (Merate, IT, 1987) lives and works in Milan. She studied at Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan and at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam.
Benni Bosetto produces wall paintings and drawings, performances, sculptures and installations in which the body is deconstructed and reimagined.
Throughout her practice, the artist maintains a sensual and therapeutic approach, almost holistic, that envelopes viewers in an intimate trance-state, where time feels suspended. Objectivity and monolithic explanations are abandoned in favour of a fragmented conception of reality, the space of possibility.
Recent shows include: Mai36, Zurich; MAXXI L’Aquila, Galleria Francesca Minini, Milan; Campoli Presti, Paris; Mambo, performance at Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna; ADA, Rome; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome; Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, Palazzo Re Rebaudengo, Guarene; Almanac, Turin; Kunstraum, London; Villa Medici, Rome; Performance presso OGR, Turin; Fondazione Baruchello, Rome.

Tomaso Binga was born in 1931 in Salerno (IT). She currently lives in Rome (IT).
Tomaso Binga (aka Bianca Pucciarelli Menna) is the artist’s pseudonym, used to challenge the privileges of the male world with irony and displacement.
She was a Professor of Theory and Method of Mass Media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Frosinone. An active cultural organizer, she has directed since 1974 the cultural association “Lavatoio Contumaciale” in Rome, and since 1992 has taken part, as vice president, in the management of the “Filiberto Menna” Foundation in Salerno.
Her practice involves collage, typewriting, painting, performance. She deals with verbal-visual writing and is among the leading figures of Italian phonetic-sound-performance poetry..

Collezione Ramo presents the third edition of Milano Drawing Week, running from Saturday, November 25 to Sunday, December 3, 2023. This annual event is organized in collaboration with and under the patronage of the Department of Culture of the Municipality of Milan, and it takes shape in a constellation of exhibitions spread across the Milanese territory.
On this occasion, Collezione Ramo makes a selection of works on paper by 20th-century Italian artists available to institutions and a network of Milanese galleries. Each artist involved is invited to choose a piece from the collection and engage it in a dialogue with their own work.
Each artwork from Collezione Ramo will be accompanied by a QR code, allowing visitors to listen to a short podcast explaining its history.
This year, in addition to the exhibitions, there will also be several side events aimed at exploring the infinite potential of this expressive medium: a party featuring a visual performance, a concert, a sketch mob, and an educational workshop.
With the third edition of Milano Drawing Week, Collezione Ramo reaffirms its bond with the city, which becomes fertile ground for new reflections on the artistic practice of drawing and serves as a crossroads for various exhibition programs and institutions.