2012

Installation

Diameter 35 cm each

90 circular modules in plasterboard, modelled in plaster.

Cypraea moneta, symbol of fertility.

The characteristic shape of this shell, which recalls the female genitalia, was considered a symbol of fertility by early peoples; this made it extremely popular and highly sought after, even in antiquity, for making necklaces and bracelets. Used over the centuries as a convenient form of currency, traces of its use can be found in China as early as the Shang dynasty (1600–1046 BC). Spread by Arab and European sailors from the 10th century onwards, these shells were used as money throughout much of Africa and the Indian Ocean. The Maldives, the principal supplier, still preserves this shell as a symbol of its currency on all banknotes. This “monetary use” continued to exist in many places until the 20th century.

In the installation Monetaria, Patrizia Trevisi draws inspiration from this cowrie, both for its shape and for its use. The shell becomes a symbol and an indictment of the commodification of the female body and its image; of gender identity, which since the 1970s has proved to be an effective advertising marketing strategy; and of sex as a currency of exchange in political and corporate corruption.

The vulvas modelled on plaster circles represent coins scattered across the floor. The exhibition space is completely dark, as if in a freeze-frame: the moment of the transaction, the payment, is frozen. In the darkness, the soundscape by Alice Gussoni echoes the voices of markets scattered around the world, crackling with their negotiations, punctuated by the sound of coins being scattered. It creates a suffocating and convulsive crescendo, a Babylon of negotiations, bargaining and deal-making.

The only source of light illuminates the anthropomorphic coins, plastically modelling their volumes through a dramatic chiaroscuro emerging from the darkness. The scattered and overlapping coins lose all formal individuality, having value only as symbols in their own particular sense. The artist invites the public to walk around the work as though around a single body lying helplessly on the ground, overwhelmed and lifeless.

She provokes the viewer, inducing them to a forced reflection “on sexual objectification as a form of dehumanization, which reduces a person to a body intended to satisfy sexual desires, and therefore to an object to be exploited and manipulated” (Volpato). The depersonalized woman, valued on the basis of one part of herself—the body—while her personality, dignity and uniqueness, which make her unique and precious, are ignored.