Le Nemesiache in 1970s and 1980s Naples : a gallery tour, group reading, and conversation between Giulia Damiani and Helena Reckitt

Giulia Damiani is a writer, researcher, curator, and performer based in London and Amsterdam. Since 2013 she has researched the artistic and political activity of the Naples-based feminist group Le Nemesiache, collaborating with the group and various artists. Damiani's research, which culminated in a PhD at Goldsmiths University in London in 2021, considers how Le Nemesiache's ritual and performative practice countered Western logic and its universalising concepts. Her performances and speculative writing have visited places such as the Temple of Mercury in Baia, the grotto of the Cumaean Sibyl near Naples, and the volcanic areas of Vesuvius and Phlegraean Fields, proposing reinterpretations that combine mythic antiquity and future invocations.


Helena Reckitt is a curator, writer, and researcher with a longstanding interest in feminist and queer art, theory and activism. Since 2015 she has coordinated the monthly Feminist Duration Reading Group, a collective research framework dedicated to under-represented feminisms. She is currently Reader in Curating in the Art Department at Goldsmiths, University of London, and was formerly Senior Curator of Programs at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto (2006–2010). Reckitt has curated exhibitions in the UK, US, and Canada, including Getting Rid of Ourselves, Onsite Gallery, OCAD University, Toronto (2014); Not Quite How I Remember It, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto (2008); and What Business Are You In? , Atlanta Contemporary Art Centre (2004). She is Consultant Editor for The Art of Feminism: The Images that Shaped the Fight for Equality (Chronicle Books, 2019 and 2022); and editor of Sanja Iveković: Unknown Heroine  (The Calvert Journal, 2013), as well as Art and Feminism (Phaidon Press, 2001). Reckitt was co-editor of Acting on AIDS (Serpent’s Tail, 1998).