‘W.A.R.N.I.N.G.’ 2015. Photography and pen
Chiara Fumai’s practice interrogates radical feminism, media culture and repression through performance and works that explore psychic abilities, anti-spectacle strategies and counterculture icons.
She creates a portal to marginalised women, who despite gaining recognition through vociferous dissent have since been overlooked. Chiara belongs to a tradition of female psychics serving as mediums during seances, where she invokes the spirits of various radical women: German terrorist Ulrike Meinhof from the Bader-Meinhoff gang, the bearded lady Annie Jones, and socialist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg. At her ‘Book of Evil Spirits’ séance in 2015, one of the women anonymously channelled themselves through Chiara Fumai, spelling out ‘WARNING’ in International Sign Language.
Recent exhibitions include I Will Never Release, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (2020); Not Without My Ghosts, Drawing Room, London (2020); Less Light at ISCP, New York, 2017; the Italian Pavilion, Venice Biennale (2019); The Book of Evil Spirits, Waterside Contemporary, London (2016) and Documenta 13, Kassell, Germany (2012). www.waterside-contemporary.com/ artists/chiara-fumai/
