The exhibition is named after one of the most famous Italian erotic comics of the 60’s, Isabella – Duchess of the Devils, the first representation of a woman portrayed as an erotic dominatrix, an attractive and adventurous blonde thirsty for revenge. This pornographic comics, often roughly self-produced and which became a fetish object, in those years was crucial for revealing and emancipating the most perverse sexual fantasies, giving for the first time an image to the tangled world of paraphilias.

The artworks and comics archive exhibited in the spaces of Associazione Barriera will allow the spectator to take a look at the practices of organized and consensual sadomasochism as a possible venue for the overthrowing and experimentation of power in its different declinations. Isabella further opens the debate to gender issues and deepens the relationships of domination and submission, by investigating the changing nature of the roles involved and the anarchist dimension of the sadomasochistic world. Keeping a watchful eye on female point of view, the exhibition pushes the figure of the woman beyond the predetermined sexual expectations and boundaries.

The narration woven by the exhibition is not aimed at presenting a unique and exhaustive definition of power, but proposes a particular interest in rereading and reinterpreting its heteronormative dynamics.

Photography by Gabriele Abbruzzese and Francesca Bicego