New Legacy Project Part 3: Italia Bella

Shoshanah Dubiner — originally written on May 12, 2024

Cloti Ricciardi and Shoshanah at the Mother’s Day exhibit in Piazza Navona, 1971.

Dear Friends and Fans,

This is the third of my Legacy Project updates. It happens to be Mother’s Day today. To commemorate this day, I will tell you about Mother’s Day in Rome, Italy, on May 9, 1971. While living and working in the movie industry in Rome, I also joined the Italian feminist group, Lotta Femminista (Feminist Struggle). In December of 1970, the Italian government had legalized divorce, but by January of 1971, there was a movement to repeal the law. Lotta Femminista decided to hold a public exhibit (mostra) ostensibly to celebrate Mother’s Day but, in fact, to strengthen the public’s will to keep divorce legal. We got a permit to hold our exhibit in Piazza Navona, one of the most popular and famous piazzas in Rome.

On a large ring of scaffoldlng, we hung a large burlap strip to which we attached images and comments we had collected. They showed how differently women were depicted by advertisers and the entertainment media, from the way real women really look and live their lives.

We displayed our collages of advertisements from popular magazines showing young, glamorous women, often serving “their man,” with our own comments pasted across the ads. Interspersed between our posters were photographs of real working-class women. The mostra captured the attention of hundreds of women and men, and brought new women into our consciousness-raising group. 

Collaged poster made from magazine ads. Lotta Femminista’s comments are on the pink strips. “Who is the true slave?” “The form is different but the slavery is the same.”

What does all the above have to do with me as an artist? To quote from the book Womanhood: chronicles of the Roman feminist movement: “The mostra was prepared in Susan’s [Shoshanah’s] home because we didn’t yet have a headquarters. Susan was the main architect of the entire mostra. (Today she lives in America…).” Trained as an artist and graphic designer, I was able to envision the mostra and to organize our group to manifest our ideas in a visual way.

My Legacy Project book will have more stories like this one, with an extra serving of tales from Italy. As always, I invite your comments and questions. They help me decide what is worth telling and what is not. 

AND a special “thank you” to my own mother, who often quoted Sara Teasdale’s poem “Barter” to me when I was a teen-ager:
“Spend all you have for loveliness, 
Buy it and never count the cost;…”