Arte oscena in luogo pubblico. La fotografia e la rappresentazione del corpo femminile nello spazio urbano

The intrinsic objectuality of photography and the enduring myth of the photographer as a lone genius, together with the historical use of the medium for the creation of consensus, seem to hinder the potential role of photography as art in public space, thus leaving little space to anti-objectual, participatory, and conflictual practices. This paper, therefore, aims to present Rebecca Momoli and CHEAP’s project HER name is revolution (2021)—a series of posters collectively installed on billboards in Bologna city centre depicting naked female subjectivities—as an attempt to collaboratively challenge the sexualisation of the female body produced by advertisements and the exclusion from visual and political representation of subjects diverging from dominant aesthetic models. A discussion of the following vandal attacks undergone by the photographs further reinforces the framing of the city both as a normative space for the reiteration of the social roles in the patriarchal system and as a place within which to perform a collective re-appropriation of public space.