This Bulletin edition takes its inspiration from the work and life of Nicola L., a French-Moroccan artist that Museion has dedicated a solo exhibition to, entitled, “I Am The Last Woman Object”. A radical and nomadic artist, Nicola L. used the female body as a form of political expression in works that challenge the image of women as objects and embrace a concept of collective, fluid identity. Her performances are not merely aesthetic experiments. They are tools that transform the way we experience the relationship between the individual and the community, intimacy and public space.
Starting from this vision, we have selected three books by authors who, even if they approach issues from different sociological, theoretical and militant viewpoints and languages, share the same conviction that female freedom is a collective process, constructed by transforming places, relationships, and everyday habits.
Leslie Kern, Feminist City. Claiming Space in a Man-Made World
In this book, Leslie Kern analyzes the city as a place of power and inequality: a space historically designed by and for men, where the needs of women and vulnerable groups are systematically neglected. Safety, mobility, care and accessibility all reveal the non-neutral nature of the urban environment. The author describes this situation as follows:
“As a woman, my everyday urban experiences are deeply gendered. My gender identity shapes how I move through the city, how I live my life day-to-day, and the choices available to me. My gender is more than my body, but my body is the site of my lived experience, when my identity, history, and the spaces I’ve lived in meet and interact and write themselves on my flesh. This is the space that I write from. It’s the space where my experiences lead me to ask: ‘Why doesn’t my stroller fit on the streetcar?” “Why do I have to walk an extra half mile home because the shortcut is too dangerous?’ […] These aren’t just personal questions. They start to get to the heart of why and how cities keep women ‘in their place’.”
An essayist and activist, Leslie Kern was born in Glendale, California in 1953. As Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick (Canada) up until 2024, she researched the conflictual relationships between different social classes, ethnicities and genders in urban contexts, and investigated issues such as gentrification and the marginalization of vulnerable groups. She then chose to dedicate her time to writing, lecturing, consulting and coaching.
Angela Davis, An Autobiography
Angela Davis recounts the story of her life as a journey of struggle against racism, patriarchy and the prison system. Her intense and political narrative shows how the Black female body has been historically monitored, punished, and marginalized. Her experience reminds us that women’s liberation cannot be separated from other forms of resistance but must be bound firmly to the fight for civil rights and social justice.
Angela Yvonne Davis was born in 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama. She is a political activist, academic and author, well known for her commitment to the civil rights, social justice and women’s liberation movements. In the 1970s, she became a symbol of the fight against racism and the prison system in the United States, issues that she has written seminal works on. She has taught at various universities, including the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she lectured in both History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies. For many years Davis was one of the figures Nicola L. frequented while living in New York.
bell hooks, Communion: The Female Search for Love
In this book, bell hooks, weaves together her personal life and theoretical reflections to offer numerous insights and an original perspective on the nature of love. She sees love not only as a romantic sentiment but an ethical and political practice. And she encourages women of all ages to listen to themselves, accept their bodies, and find within themselves the free and self-aware love that feminism, in its fight for gender equality, has often neglected.
Thanks to her clear and accessible style, which alternates between quotations from academic essays and references to a wide range of cult series and popular bestsellers, bell hooks shows, critically and analytically, that the one thing that is always missing in mainstream culture is love. Love in the sense of accepting yourself and your body, free of historical and social constraints, external conditioning, and patriarchal conventions.
Despite this, the author is always full of hope, as she argues that change can be achieved through intergenerational exchange, sisterhood, solidarity and reciprocally supportive friendships.
bell hooks, the pen name of Gloria Jean Watkins, was born in 1952 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. A respected academic, essayist, and activist, she is recognized as one of the most influential voices in radical Black feminism. Having graduated from Stanford University, she went on to teach at various universities, including Yale and the City College of New York. In 1999, she received an honorary degree in literature from the University of Ferrara. She died on December 15, 2021, at the age of 69, in her home in Berea, Kentucky.
These books are recommended due to their links to the Nicola L. – I Am The Last Woman Object retrospective, dedicated to the work of the celebrated French artist Nicola L. (b. 1932, Morocco; d. 2018, US) currently on display at Museion. The exhibition is a unique opportunity to explore the artist’s multidisciplinary oeuvre which covers a surprisingly wide range of media, from sculpture to collage, painting to drawing, and performance to film. Nicola L. – I Am The Last Woman Object is the artist’s first museum exhibition in Italy and the most expansive presentation of her work to date.
The show runs until 01.03.2026
