The importance of genealogy as a discipline is something feminists know deeply, as it is the tool that connects us with everything that was done before us and situates us historically in the present. These feminist genealogies refer to previous ones and are, in themselves, part of a necessary activism from both Academia and History.
The work of artist Monica Mura (Cagliari, 1979) can be read from multiple perspectives, but one of the main ones is precisely her commitment to women’s history. Mura is interested in recovering memory, as she did in the project AUSENCIA-PRESENCIA. Your void is my absence, your memory is my presence (2017), but she also works with the possibility of art to transform reality.
Equally important is the active role of her works, which require the participation of the public, questioning how they look and asking what each of us does individually to end inequalities. Besides women, other marginalized groups, such as trans people or those at risk of social exclusion, have become protagonists in Mura’s work, who, far from taking a privileged position and directing the gaze, “lets herself be acted upon” to relearn the place where she positions herself as an artist.
Furthermore, she has created works that directly address the need for sisterhood as a feminist resistance strategy against the rise of male violence, as can be seen in her project NON MÁIS SABAS TINGUIDAS. Da saba á rede: atrapad@s e salvad@s (2016). Mura’s precise and committed voice is also evident in works that directly speak about gender-based violence, sexist stereotypes in couple relationships and toxic relationships, or in references to individual identity (and her Sardinian origin) through the stories inherited from her maternal family line.
For Mura, bodily marks are verses on which to write a new story, the skin is a paper on which to tell other narratives; the word, whether metaphorical or literal, is also a constant element in the artist’s work, in a courageous effort to trace other narratives that give light and voice to those historically silenced. As Virginia Woolf said, “the anonymous of history were often women”; Mura resists this with an aesthetic sensitivity and conceptual depth that restores voice and dignity to all the forgotten women of history.