shannon ebner responds to “re-materialization of language: 1978-2022”

Materializzazione del linguaggio, curated by artist and poet Mirella Bentivoglio, took place in 1978 as part of the 38th Venice Biennale. The show included 90 international female artists, poets, and collectives engaged in the relationship between women and language. Their works expressed a transgressive identity of radical rejection of patriarchal language, both poetically and critically.

Re-Materialization of Language: 1978-2022, curated by Cristiana Perrella and Andrea Viliani with Vittoria Pavesi, took place in 2022 at the Fondazione Antonio Dalle Nogare in Bolzano. It was a re-make of Bentivoglio’s seminal exhibition and also included contemporary artists.

The catalogue, designed by Irma Boom and published by Nero Editions in 2024, brings together the research from both shows with a wide selection of artworks and documents.

As an artist whose work explores the visual, material, and temporal circumstances of language, Shannon Ebner is curious about this re-staged exhibition and the book that accompanies it.

“I see many different types of visual and verbal social formations in the catalogue,” she says, “some of which are so abstracted and asemantic that they disregulate our conventional notions of normative communication systems.”

Shannon responds by preparing some questions for the curator Cristiana Perrella and by showing related research of her own.

Supported by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (12th edition, 2023).