In 1977, at Rome’s Campo D gallery, Bianca Menna – née Pucciarelli – wed her own alter ego Tomaso Binga in a ceremony that marked the metamorphosis of woman into artist. Her wry choice of a male pseudonym sums up the language games underlying her practice. Over her long career, Tomaso Binga has been a performer, poet, and visual artist, using words and actions to undermine patriarchal constructs. She has acted out the letters of the alphabet like a carnal primer, telling the story of an independent woman (Scrittura vivente, 1976), and obsessively inscribed panels, notebooks, clothing, and wallpaper to free herself of meaning and overturn linguistic conventions (Scrittura desemantizzata, 1972–1974). Her work took on shades of Concrete Poetry in the late 1970s, when Mirella Bentivoglio invited her to take part in Materializzazione del Linguaggio at the Biennale Arte 1978. The squares of her Dattilocodici are made by re-printing an ideogram that superimposes two typewritten graphemes in two colours at regular intervals. By combining an i with a 9 or a 7 or a j, the artist strips the original numbers and letters of their identity. The ideograms extend a verbal-visual invitation: if, as Binga believes, writing does not equate to describing, then readers can project their own subjectivity onto these texts.
Stefano Mudu
