The Body and the Asemantic Writing in the Performance of Tomaso Binga

Performance artist and poet Bianca Pucciarelli Menna’s (1931–) artistic production is characterized by her conception of art as a mixture of gesture, writing and sound. Her use of the male pseudonym, Tomaso Binga, reveals her efforts to break down social gender stereotypes and challenge the cultural privileges reserved for men in artistic circles of her time. By analyzing Binga’s visual experimentations during the 1970s, this chapter focuses on the ways that she proposed different linguistic codes to create a new visual grammar that could impact patriarchal artistic canons. How does Bianca Pucciarelli Menna’s male pseudonym contribute to that project and what visual strategies does she adopt to achieve her purpose? This chapter will examine how writing, images and body are all key elements in Binga’s search for a new language in art.