In this talk, Frida Sandström, PhD, will introduce her research on art historian, critic and feminist Carla Lonzi (1931-1982). Lonzi was one of the first intellectuals to use the voice recorder in the mid-60’s Italy, and as Sandström has written extensively about in her recent PhD thesis, ”Dropout Subjects: Jill Johnston’s and Carla Lonzi’s Disintegration and Deculturalization of Art Criticism as Social Critique in 1969” (University of Copenhagen, 2025), this was Lonzi’s way out of the art world and into separatist feminist philosophy, collective writing and consciousness raising practices. In 1970, Lonzi co-founded the feminist collective Rivolta Femminile together with Italian artist Carla Accardi and Italian-Eritrean journalist Elvira Banotti.
Sandström is an art critic, art historian and critical cultural theoretician based in Copenhagen. She initiated her archive-based research on Lonzi at the Danish Academy in 2022, and wrote a large part of her PhD thesis at the Swedish Institute in Rome and at Bibliotheca Hertziana. During her current research fellowship at the Danish Academy, she is studying Lonzi’s readership of the postcolonial theoretician Frantz Fanon, and the influence from the Algerian anti-colonial struggle in Italian second wave feminism, of which Lonzi was a pioneer. Besides this intellectual history, Sandström is co-translating the first compilation of feminist essays published by Rivolta Femminile 1974, ”Sputiamo su Hegel e altri scritti,” to Danish and Swedish, together with Mikkel Ibsen Sørensen (OVO Press and H:Ström/Subaltern).
It’s a great pleasure to invite you to Sandström’s lecture on Friday, 17:00, which will last for around 45 minutes, followed by an informal discussion.