This exhibition combines posters on women’s suffrage in the collection of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich and in the National Library of the Republic of San Marino. My research started with the poster “Frauenstimmrecht Nein” (Donald Brun, 1946). When I first saw it, its big red “Nein” hit me like a blow. Following this experience, I got interested in the Swiss history of women suffrage and the one in my home country, the Republic of San Marino. The juxtaposition of the posters shows similarities in the main arguments.
However, through research on books, articles and little interviews, I realised how different the two movements where: the Swiss campaign with its strong opposition by women and the Sammarinese one with the influence of the Church, meaning that social progress had to come ‘from the right’. Interestingly, I could also trace a certain cyclicality in the way women successively gained and were deprived of their rights throughout history. This perspective is complemented by works like “ The Handmaid’s Tale” which projects the issue into a dystopian future and challenges the view of a teleological progression towards more rights for everyone. By covering up anything which had to do with ‘women/men’ and ‘yes/no’, I wanted to challenge the integrity of works which were designed to be as unmistakable and essentialist as possible: the lonely child picking her nose (poster by Hugo Laubi, 1946) could then be waiting for her mum… as well as her dad, or maybe just a parent?