Self/Portraits: Relating Narratives, Symposium at Centrespace, Visual Research Center, Dundee Contemporary Arts, 9th December 2016

Self/Portraits: Relating Narratives is the sequel to the performative screening Autoritratti which took place at the Showroom Gallery (London) in 2015.

This screening weaves together the visual narratives of 12 international women artists or collectives who have worked around questions of identity and self-determination, often in confrontation to their respective social and political contexts. Employing real and interpreted voices, lyrics and unorthodox visual techniques, their works address female sexuality, motherhood, ecology and violence.


Self/Portraits: Relating Narratives employs varied methodological tools, including dialogue, autobiography, cross-genre and fragmented narratives. This curatorial approach is inspired by two Italian feminist authors who located everyday narratives and exchanges at the heart of their philosophical and political strategies. The radical thinker Carla Lonzi and her book Autoritratto [Self-portrait] (1969), offered an unprecedented montage of different artists’ interviews recomposed by the author in a continuous flux, a convivial conversation, and most significantly, as a personal portrait carved out of relations between artists and their critics. It also refers to feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero’s book Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood (2000), where an exploration of identity is framed as the desire to hear one’s story narrated by an other.