Pt.1 – Biography and works of Tomaso Binga. Conceptual art, words and writing in feminist and linguistic research. Erica Ravenna Contemporary Art Gallery Rome

Pt.2 – Tomaso Binga (Salerno, 1931) – stage name of Bianca Pucciarelli Menna – is an artist, poet and performer who lives and works in Rome.

Pt.3 – Bianca Pucciarelli Menna, alias Tomaso Binga, was born in Salerno in 1931 and lives and works in Rome. The male pseudonym she has used since the beginning of her artistic career in the 1970s has long been an integral part of her personality and work. It was in 1971 that Tomaso Binga began his artistic and poetic experimentation focused on verbal-visual writing, a form of research that emerged in Italy in the 1950s and 1960s and involved many important artists and writers under the name of Visual Poetry. Bianca uses her pseudonym as an ironic and polemical act against gender classification, a slap in the face to the privileges of male presence in aspects of daily life, family, professional life and, of course, the artistic environment. In the early stages of her career, she worked with a-semantic writing, presenting her first exhibition in 1974 at the Galleria Obelisco in Rome with an important introduction by Ermanno Migliorini. In 1974, she took part in the exhibition Coazione a mostrare (Compulsion to Show), curated by Romana Loda in Erbusco, and became director of the cultural association “Lavatoio contumaciale” in Rome, where she promoted numerous initiatives in poetry, visual arts and new media. In 1974, she began her performance art, the first of which was Parole da distruggere, parole da conservare (Words to Destroy, Words to Preserve). The following years were rich in cultural activities and significant exhibitions: in 1976, she completed a series of works that would remain a cornerstone of her artistic research, her “Scrittura Vivente” (Living Writing): letters of the alphabet formed with a female body in different positions and, above all, her famous wallpapers, the first of which was Carta da Parato (Wallpaper), a wallpaper modified by a continuous graphic sign, which covered itself and an entire house in the Parioli district during a poetry performance, declaring “I am a piece of paper!”. In the same year, she began collaborating with photographer Verita Monselles and was invited to participate in the exhibition organised by Mirella Bentivoglio entitled Tra linguaggio e immagine (Between Language and Image). An important part of her work is her constant involvement in both visual and linguistic cultural spheres, always in close relationship and comparison: she produces book-objects, participates in sound poetry events, publishes her texts in numerous magazines and poetry books, and works constantly on linguistic and visual stereotypes, always with the aim of eluding and undermining them, making them powerful or powerless for unintended purposes. In 1992, he became vice-president of the Filiberto Menna Foundation, continuing to participate in important exhibitions and cultural initiatives.

Other exhibitions and cultural initiatives include:
Magma, Castelvecchio Museum, Verona (1977); Materialisation of Language (Venice Biennale, 1978); Tomaso Binga: Stories of Ordinary Writing 1970-1987, A.A.M. Modern Architecture and Art in Rome, Rome (1987); Poesia Totale, Palazzo della Ragione, Mantua (1998); VII International Congress of Media Art, University of Salerno, Salerno (1999); Bunker Poetico, Venice Biennale (2001); Autoritratto di un matrimonio, MLAC – Museo Laboratorio, La Sapienza University, Rome (2005); La Scrittura, Fondazione J. Klemm, Buenos Aires (2006); Viaggio nella parola, Studio Gennai, La Spezia (2007); Art Action. VI Festival Internazionale, Mantua (2008); Prefigure, Galleria Wunderkammern, Rome (2011); Per-forming a collection, MADRE, Naples (2013); Anni ’70 / Arte a Roma, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (2013); Corpo a Corpo, GNAM – National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rome (2017); Corporale, Erica Ravenna, Rome (2017); Televisionario. Francesco Vezzoli guarda la RAI, Prada Foundation, Milan (2017); MAGMA. The Body and the Word in the Art of Women between Italy and Lithuania from 1965 to Today, Palazzo Poli, Rome (2018); Stories at Stake, Galleria Erica Ravenna, Rome (2018); Tomaso Binga: A Silenced Victory, Mimosa House, London (2019); Who’s Afraid of Drawing? Works on Paper of the 20th Century from the Ramo Collection, Museo del Novecento, Milan (2019); Tomaso Binga, Galleria Tiziana Di Caro, Naples (2020); Doing Deculturalisation, Museion, Bolzano (2019); The Unexpected Subject. 1978 Art and Feminism in Italy, Frigoriferi Milanesi, Milan (2019); Il latte dei sogni (The Milk of Dreams) Venice Biennale (2022); Vita Nuova. Nuove sfide per l’arte in Italia. 1960-1975 (New Life. New Challenges for Art in Italy. 1960-1975), MAMAC, Nice (2022); Scrivo di proprio pugno (I Write with My Own Hand), Galleria Erica Ravenna, Rome (2022); Re-Materialisation of Language. 1978-2022, Fondazione Dalle Nogare, Bolzano (2022); Territories of Performance: Paths and Practices in Italy (1967–1982), MAXXI Museum, Rome (2022); Tomaso Binga – Corps-poésie, La Galerie, Noisy-le-Sec, France (2023); A Model, Mudam – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg (2023); Corpus Naturae | Tomaso Binga and María Ángeles Vila Tortosa, Mattatoio, Rome (2024); A Machine is a Machine, Galleria Erica Ravenna (2024); Around spontaneous interventions for some friends, Galleria Erica Ravenna, Rome (2024); All art is relational: ?, Galleria Erica Ravenna, Rome (2025); Tomaso Binga – Euforia, MADRE Museum, Naples (2025); UNAROMA, curated by Luca Lo Pinto and Cristiana Perrella, MACRO, Rome (2025).