Andrea Bowers
La Ragnatela
Curated by Bernardo Follini
October 29, 2026 – March 28, 2027
Opening October 29, h 6:30 pm
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo
Via Modane 16, Turin
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo presents a solo exhibition by Andrea Bowers, Los Angeles-based artist who, for more than three decades, has developed her practice at the intersection of activism and the visual arts. In her work, the artist employs different media, from drawing and painting to installation and video, to explore issues of social justice and advocacy and to celebrate overlooked figures and events from the history of social struggles. Her exhibitions are developed through a methodology based on the artist’s close engagement with communities and social movements, through community life and discussion, participation in demonstrations, the building of activists’ networks, and archival research. As a result, each exhibition project becomes a platform for encounter, listening, and discussion, where the stories, concerns, and joy of different groups can be shared with audiences recognised as active participants in public debate.
The exhibition presented at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo traces Bowers’ longstanding interest in ecofeminism, with a particular focus on the anti-nuclear and disarmament feminist movements of the 1980s. The exhibition presents a selection of existing works alongside a new cycle of works. The pieces belong to some of the artist’s most renowned formats, from cardboards, made with recycled materials to celebrate feminist histories of the past; to political ribbons, installations composed of coloured ribbons bearing activist slogans that visitors are invited to take away; to neons, which combine political symbols and iconography with historical and contemporary quotations.
A core group of new works is devoted to the experience of the Italian anti-nuclear feminist movement, and specifically to the Campo delle donne (Women’s Camp) in Comiso, Sicily, launched in 1983 under the name La Ragnatela (“The Spiderweb”). The initiative emerged in protest against the installation of a NATO military base in Comiso, at Magliocco Airport, and in support of the movement for nuclear disarmament.
La Ragnatela represents one of the most significant ecofeminist experiences in Italy and was established in close connection with the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp in UK, founded in 1981. Alongside a series of new neon works inspired by La Ragnatela, the exhibition will present rare archival documents, made available through the involvement of a network of activists and researchers, including historical members of the group. The exhibition sheds light on an important feminist contribution to the peace movement and to the struggle for disarmament—an issue that has once again become an urgent concern in today’s global context—while recovering and reconnecting the dense historical network of transnational alliances.
Andrea Bowers (b. 1965, Wilmington OH) received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1992. Bowers is the currently the subject of a major institutional solo exhibition at Glenstone, Potomac, MD, and has previously enjoyed solo museum exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, OH; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; MCA Chicago, IL; Vienna Secession, Austria; Fondazione Furla and Galleria d’Arte Moderna (GAM), Milan; Museum Abteiberg, Germany; Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst, Germany; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; Bronx Museum, NY; and the Power Plant, Toronto. Her work has been included in recent group shows at MOCA Los Angeles; SFMOMA, CA; Hayward Gallery, London; and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA; among others. Bowers’s work is in many significant collections, including Tate Modern, London; MoMA, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC; MOCA Los Angeles, CA; SFMOMA, CA; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA; MFA Houston, TX; Museum Abteiberg, Germany; and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens. Her major commission for the San Francisco International Airport’s Harvey Milk Terminal will debut in Winter 2026. Bowers lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
