TOMASO BINGA: POESIA MUTA

Brigade is proud to present the first Scandinavian exhibition of the Italian artist Tomaso Binga (b. 1931, Salerno, lives and works in Rome).

The artistic identity of Tomaso Binga came into being during Bianca Pucciarelli Menna's 'Oggi Spose' performance in Rome, 1977, where she married her alter ego as a reaction to the lack of attention feminist art received in the 1970s. Binga has since worked under her male pseudonym to question male privilege in the art world and emphasize the gender issues inherent in art.

With an artistic practice that is based on linguistic experiments, Binga makes use of repetition and sarcasm as focal points to challenge masculine privileges. This is also expressed in the serial productions, such as Alfabeto Poetico Monumentale, that incorporates Binga's body posed as letters.

The pseudonym Tomaso Binga came about, as Binga was her nickname as a child and Tomaso as an ambiguous reference to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the founder of the Futurist movement. In her own words, the male pseudonym "[...] plays on irony and displacement; it seeks to expose the masculine privilege that is also dominant in art. It is a paradoxical challenge to an overarching social structure that we have partly inherited and partly want to break down as women."

Binga's artistic practice has existed for almost 50 years, but has only received the attention it deserves in the last decade where she, among other things opened several special exhibitions at leading exhibition venues and biennales in Europe and collaborated with Dior.

The Tomaso Binga exhibition is a presentation of works ranging from the Oggi Sposa performance, which started it all, and up to the present and offers a broad introduction to an artistic vision and career that can only inspire and impress.

In addition to her own exhibition, Binga is also introducing her new initiative Creative Transhumance;

"Creative transhumance is my latest artistic project that delivers the torch of creativity to artists of different generations to be supported and reinvigorated through the unifying force of art born from the desire to return to dialogue, debate and plural actions. I meant it as a multi-voiced speech that aims to create union, openness, acceptance and not the watertight closure of the personal exhibition. The first stage of the project started in 2020 at the Tiziana Di Caro Gallery in Naples, where the show did welcome, together with my works, the photographs by Grazia Menna and Elvi Ratti's Nodes of Life. I'm glad now to close up this experience at Brigade Gallery hosting Sabina Alessi and Andrea Villalón artworks".

Works from both Sabina Alessi and Andrea Villalón will be included in the exhibition.