Arianna Cavalensi

This work engages with the notion of womanhood and gender-based violence, with a geopolitical focus on the North-Eastern part of Italy. The research began over two years ago when I first approached the anti-violence Centre called Centro Donna based in the town of Mestre, Venice. During this time, I met eight women who shared their stories with me. Theirs are stories of domestic and sexual violence, but also of redemption and resistance against the social stigma, victim-blaming, and institutional failures that are intertwined in the complexity of silencing gendered violence.

The work further stretches the focus to contemporary women’s protests taking place in the Venetian region and beyond, and intertwines them with archival images from the second-wave feminist movement that characterized Italy in the 1970s.