Cindy Sherman and Italy: Reception and Genealogies in the 1990s

Abstract

In 1990, the first Italian exhibition of Cindy Sherman's work was presented at the PAC in Milan. An anthological exhibition brought together about seventy photographic works produced since the end of the 1970s. Since the first Untitled film stills of 1977, simulations of the stage or advertising photos in which the artist plays a different role each time, Cindy Sherman, through the use of staging and cross-dressing, anticipates a trend that will be widely developed by artists. Although already present in the performative practices of the 1970s, reflections on male and female roles, their social and non-biological matrix and their performative character, were become central to much artistic production in the 1990s, also thanks to the contemporary reflections on gender theorized, above all, by Judith Butler, Teresa De Lauretis and Rosi Braidotti. This contribution intends to reconstruct and analyze the reception of Cindy Sherman's work in Italy, starting from the first exhibition in 1990, and the influence that her works had on a new generation of female artists interested in photography as a means of identity representation, as is evident, for example, in the works of Ottonella Mocellin.