Doppio servizio con lacrima di perla / Double service with a pearl tear, 1974

Clemen Parrocchetti, Doppio servizio con lacrima di perla / Double service with a pearl tear, 1974; Assemblage, embroidery and spools, pins on metal; 51 × 25 × 7.5 cm

The Italian artist Clemen Parrocchetti (1923-2016) was an active participant in the feminist liberation movement in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s, a period that is still considered one of the most heated moments in the country’s history in the fight for women’s suffrage. This translated into a strong visual grammar in the materials of domestic labor – needles, spools, bobbins, cooking utensils, textiles – repurposed into the subversive tools of denunciation and protest. By using such “modest materials”, drawn from the confines of feminine domesticity, Parrocchetti critiqued and contested female subjugation and objectification.

Encased in plexiglass, this work comprises an abstract assemblage, with stitches leading down from a fabric mouth and separating into two spools and a tear. The title, Doppio servizio con lacrima di perla / Double Service with a Pearl Tear, could therefore reference immense labour of women in the household. Within Parrocchetti’s oeuvre, the mouth and lips function as symbols of women’s voices and their potential release in protest against oppression. Here, however, the tear-shaped pearl bead may suggest the emotional burden and suffering brought about by these burdens which is usually hidden.