Andrea Bowers Spotlights 1980S Italian Ecofeminist Movement In Turin Show

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Artist Andrea Bowers is presenting“La Ragnatela,” a solo exhibition at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Italy. The show focuses on the Italian anti-nuclear feminist movement and the women's camp, also called La Ragnatela, which translates to“the spiderweb” in Italian.

The exhibition highlights the 1983 launch of La Ragnatela in Comiso, Sicily, where women protested the installation of US nuclear cruise missiles at the local NATO base. Bowers' work for the show, which she describes as a mini-retrospective, engages with this movement. It includes pieces she created in 2003, 2013, 2022, 2023, and four new artworks specifically produced for this exhibition.

Much of La Ragnatela's history has been forgotten, according to the artist. Bowers collaborated with curator Bernardo Follini to reconstruct the network of Italian ecofeminists. Follini located three women, now in their 80s and 90s, who contributed documents and clippings to the exhibition. During a preview in Turin, Bowers stated,“The social engagement part of my practice is the least known about or documented because the art world is more focused on objects, but this is what I'm most proud of.”

The exhibition opens with Defense of Necessity ( 2003 ), a quilt that incorporates spiderweb imagery, a symbol of the American Women's Pentagon Action, an ecofeminist and anti-nuclear movement active in the US, Italy, and England. Bowers explained that the quilt, displayed as a fence, explores the line between nonviolence and violence in activism. She described the work's title, a legal term, as a“play on words and it's poetic.”

Adjacent to the quilt, four vitrine cases feature a timeline of the La Ragnatela movement and letter exchanges between Italian women in Comiso and their British allies. Photographs of arrested protestors are also displayed, alongside a letter from a woman detained and tried, who notably wore a“question authority” T-shirt during her trial. Bowers incorporated this slogan into Neon Spiderweb #3 ( 2026 ), one of four new neon works featuring activist mottos like“A better end of the world is possible,”“Return our future,” and“To be free from fear.”

These slogans reappear on Political Ribbons ( 2026 ), brightly colored silky ribbons that visitors are encouraged to take from the wall. Bowers noted,“It's a simple way for people to take a position,” a method she has used previously, still enjoying seeing the ribbons“in the wild or online.” Other works include hyperrealistic graphite on paper pieces from 2003, such as Diabloblockade, Diablo Nuclear Power Plant, Abalone Alliance, 198 and Women's Pentagon Action, 1981, Detail of Woven Web Around Pentagon, which recreate photographs from her mother's friends involved with the Californian eco-group Mother for Peace. Cardboard ( 2026 ) features a life-sized cardboard figure holding a flag inscribed“Sun and wind,” created by Bowers using an iPad projection technique.

This exhibition marks a return for Bowers to the foundation, where she last showed in a group exhibition titled“Guarene 98” in 1998. Now, 28 years later, works from her Chandeliers of Interconnectedness series are also on view alongside exhibitions by artists Nan Goldin and Joseph Yaeger. Bowers also presents Neon Opland ( 2026 ), a neon sign inspired by a La Ragnatela poster depicting a woman kicking a missile, with the words“No ai missile.”

Source: ARTnews

MENAFN04112026005694012507ID1111917705