Chiara says Chiara

The Pascali Foundation is welcoming autumn 2024 with “Chiara Says Chiara”, a homage to Chiara Fumai (Rome 1978 – Bari 2017) at its Polignano a Mare gallery. An Italian artist of Apulian descent, Fumai remains one of the most recognised artists of her generation, both in Italy and internationally.

The exhibition highlights the influence of Carla Lonzi’s ideas in Fumai’s work. This influence is reflected in the installation “Shut Up, Actually Talk” (2012), originally conceived by Fumai for dOCUMENTA(13) in Kassel.

In this sound installation, Fumai’s recorded voice recites passages from “Sputiamo su Hegel” (1970) by Lonzi and other Rivolta Femminile writings. As the words echo, a bookshelf stacked with philosophy texts dramatically collapses to the floor, sinking along with broken furniture fragments, shattered mirrors, and a replica of a well-known portrait of Hegel—symbolising the breakdown of Western patriarchal culture.

Previously exhibited as part of “Moral Exhibition House”, this work is now, for the first time, shown alongside “This Last Line Cannot Be Translated”, a large mural conceived by Fumai in 2017 during her residency at the ISCP in New York, later exhibited posthumously at the Italian Pavilion of the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. In this mural, lines and words from the “Mass of Chaos” invocation form the jagged outline of a cave interior, filled with an esoteric collection of symbols and sigils, alongside instructions for a protective ritual against all social and spiritual constraints.

Chiara Fumai’s decade-long artistic journey is a powerful act of defiance against the limitations, prejudices, and stereotypes embedded within dominant systems of thought and power, as well as in the very fabric of language itself.