At different moments in the 20^th century, Georgia O’Keeffe, Agnes Martin, Marguerite Wildenhain, Nancy Holt and Andrea Zittel sought alternative ways of living as artists and as women. Seeking isolation for artistic focus, they nevertheless each practiced a unique, self-determined mode of collectivity and connectedness. Withdrawal, therefore, can be interpreted as a way to reimagine social structures, to reconfigure the relationship between the individual and society. Ultimately, to reinvent alternative modes of living together through the creation of a necessary space that forms a premise for more conscious principles of sociality.
What follows is a diary of a research trip across the American West and South West on the traces of these artists.
The research was supported by the Italian Council (2024), promoted by the Directorate-General For Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.
[This text is in Italian and English]