SHE DEVIL

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This book tells the story of SHE DEVIL, the video exhibition created by STUDIO STEFANIA MISCETTI. She Devil is the name of a heroine in the Marvel Comics universe, Shanna the She Devil, and title of the famous film from 1989 by Susan Seidelman. The name alludes in a playful way to the diabolical and bizarre spirit with which artistic experience investigates day-to-day life. The videos focus on a female research and place the various fields of investigation in direct contrast to one another. The purpose of the initiative is to stress- at times using irony, at times realism – the collective consciousness on themes such as female identity, the body as repository of representation and meaning, and personal experiences on universal dimensions, even when the very intimacy of the artists is at the forefront of their works.

SHE DEVIL was initiated in 2006 thanks to an idea of Stefani a Miscetti, and involves artists and curators, both Italian and international, from emerging young talents to highly acclaimed personalities. The various works and different critical perspectives coexist within a discourse of many voices, in which the multiplicity of feminine worlds and visions emerges.

Preoccupation 2008, single-channel video, 1’12” courtesy of the artist curated by Manuela Pacella

The pupil, known as “little doll” in Latin, works like a pinhole camera which, calibating light, reflects a miniature of the image in front of it and projects that picture in the inner of the ocular bulb, on the retina, which sends it back to the brain for elaboration, decoding and comparing it with our visual and cognitive experience. In the video Preoccupation the reflected image on the enlarged pupil is highly iconic; its symbolic strength prevents from dissuading the gaze, not caring if masculine or feminine. That shape is by now listed in the general imaginary as a signal of erotic subjugation.