A Land of Their Own. Italian Women Artists in the Colony of Libya

Giulia Beatrice, Ph.D.

This project investigates the presence and activity of Italian women artists in the colony of Libya in the 1930s, particularly during Italo Balbo’s governorship (1934–1940). The research aims to analyze, more broadly, the condition of Italian women in the colonies and to examine whether distance from the motherland led to the creation of “transformative spaces” in which the gender-oriented rules imposed at home became more fluid. The main objective of the project is to explore how this phenomenon was reflected in the large female art community in Libya and how this “space of their own” has directly impacted their artistic creation. While my research begins with a sociological premise—the symbolic, political, and cultural roles of Italian women as colonial settlers in Libya—its primary aim is to examine the artistic production and works created by women. Through four case studies—mural decoration; schools, workshops, and ateliers; exhibitions; and the colonial establishment of Tripoli—the project seeks to answer the following questions: How did the colonial experience shape women’s art? Did it lead them to depart from traditional Italian Fascist aesthetics, which were strongly gendered and normative for women? Additionally, how did female artists engage with colonial art, which was predominantly produced from a male perspective and often characterized by the exoticization and eroticization of the Orientalist gaze? Did these artists appropriate or reject such representations?

Through this research, I aim to assess whether the female gaze produced artworks that differed from the predominant male discourse on colonial art, generating new understandings of both colonial art and the ways in which the “African experience” was appropriated.