Directly from the gallery of the historic Society of Illustrators in New York, it arrives in Rome – in European exclusive – until July 11 at Palazzo Merulana, the exhibition WOMEN IN COMICS curated by Kim Munson and the legendary Trina Robbins. The exhibition is organized by ARF! Festival del Fumetto a Roma, together with Comicon in Naples, and promoted by the Embassy of the United States of America in Rome.
And if female emancipation also passed through Wonder Woman, Scarlet Witch, and others?
The exhibition invites you to reflect on this theme, immersing you in an anthology of the process of female self-determination in US comics, thanks to the genius and courage of its 22 most famous and prolific cartoonists, who have made history in North American comics. It starts with the “vintage” comic, with a slightly retro flavor, inspired by the reassuring tranquility of American daily life in the 1950s which, whether real or presumed, nonetheless contributed to strengthening the spirit of a country that after World War II had entered another war, ongoing and silent, like the “cold” conflict against the Soviet Union. It then continues with the more authorial graphic novel phenomenon, exploring themes such as love, sexuality, creativity, discrimination, and independence, traversing the psychedelia of the 1970s, taking on the role of a political manifesto of a new beat generation that from the Bay Area of San Francisco believed and felt it could contribute to writing new pages for the society of the future, ultimately settling into underground comics and the contemporary mainstream scene of Marvel and DC Comics.
Alongside the works of Trina Robbins, a true “militant” icon of underground comics and feminist activism (who in 1986, we recall, became the first female cartoonist in history to draw Wonder Woman), original works by Afua Richardson and Alitha Martinez (both African American authors and activists, winners of the Eisner Award for their work on World of Wakanda from Marvel, a spin-off series of the already “political” and acclaimed Black Panther), Colleen Doran and Emil Ferris, whose graphic novel My Favorite Thing is Monsters (published in Italy by Bao Publishing) has become a true critical and public success. It continues with Ebony Flowers (author of Hot Comb, considered by Guardian, Washington Post, and Believer one of the best books of 2019), Trinidad Escobar (Filipino cartoonist and poet from San Francisco, where she teaches at the California College of the Arts), Tillie Walden (On a Sunbeam, Bao), Jen Wang (The Prince and the Dressmaker, Bao), Joyce Farmer (Special Exits, Eris Edizioni) and many others, who touch upon or traverse themes of great socio-cultural relevance and current affairs related to feminist movements and the female body, anti-racism, trans-feminism, violence, and the relationship between genders and identity in comics.
The exhibition path. The reasons
The WOMEN IN COMICS exhibition is conceived as a chronological path through 90 original works (tables, drawings, prints), divided into three main sections that tell three very representative moments in the history of North American comics.
The first section “Back” presents a selection of the so-called matriarchs of comics (starting with Trina Robbins) who took their first steps in a predominantly male and misogynistic industry, almost relegated to romance comics during World War II “until the men came home and reclaimed their jobs”; women indeed returned to comics in the 1970s, thanks to a newfound female freedom.
The second section features the works of those authors who contributed to change, who operated the “revolution” of the prevailing editorial models up to that point, corresponding to the spread of independent publishing in the 1960s and 1970s, the social, sexual, and cultural emancipations that were taking place especially in San Francisco, with its university as the epicenter, which widely reverberated on the role of the “female cartoonist” in a national landscape of great ferment and change. The 1960s and 1970s were the period when women could finally succeed under their own names.
The concluding section “Forward” is where contemporary female comics become synonymous with self-determination: the new authors of this generation, now – through the proliferation of genres and formats or serial comics linked to the great icons of pop culture – have fully claimed their popularity as active protagonists in the publishing market, winning increasingly prestigious awards and occupying an ever more central role both in productive terms and in terms of cultural and artistic debate within the comic book industry.
