A Turin Show Brings Italian Women's 1980s Anti-Nuclear Protest Back Into View
Los Angeles-based artist Andrea Bowers has opened a solo exhibition in Turin, Italy, about a group of Italian women who protested nuclear weapons in the 1980s. The show, called "La Ragnatela," is Italian for "the spiderweb." It is on at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, a contemporary art foundation in Turin, and runs until 28 March 2027.
The story starts in Sicily. In 1983, women launched La Ragnatela in Comiso, a town on the island, to protest the placing of US nuclear cruise missiles at the NATO base there. Cruise missiles are guided weapons that fly low to their targets, and some can carry nuclear warheads. NATO is the Western military alliance.
Bowers worked with curator Bernardo Follini to find and rebuild the network of Italian ecofeminists, women who join environmental and feminist campaigning. ArtNews reports that three women, now in their 80s and 90s, contributed documents and newspaper clippings. Much of the show is built from that material.
The exhibition opens with Defense of Necessity (2003), a quilt that draws on women's traditional sewing and craft. Its stitched spiderwebs stand for the Women's Pentagon Action, an American grassroots movement that also opposed nuclear weapons and linked that cause to ecofeminism.
Four glass display cases, called vitrines, hold the archive. Two show a timeline of the La Ragnatela movement. The other two display letters exchanged between the women in Comiso and activists in England who travelled to Sicily to help with the protest.
The newer works carry slogans. Neon Spiderweb #3 (2026) is a glowing spiderweb that reads "question authority." Three more neon pieces say "A better end of the world is possible," "Return our future" and "To be free from fear." Bowers' Political Ribbons (2026) is a wall of brightly coloured silky ribbons. They carry lines such as "People over profits," "Outlaw women are the only hope for earth's survival" and "Widen the web to break the nuclear chain."
Visitors are invited to take a ribbon from the wall when they leave. The show also includes earlier works from 2003, 2013, 2022 and 2023, along with four pieces made for this exhibition. The works range across drawing, painting, installation and video.
Bowers has spent more than three decades working where activism meets the visual arts. The Turin foundation lists her show among its exhibitions that opened on 29 October 2026. For visitors, the ribbons are a simple way to take a piece of the show home.
