Parallel to the Glass Celing Index 2025, published on March 8 by the Economist, other numbers come from the Italian chronicle, which in 2024 saw eighty-one murders of women at the hands mostly of family members.
Enumerations_Can words? consists of a visual polyphony of eighty-one female faces, captured by scanners, and a sound recording in which a sequence of voices recite fragments of verses from Leopardi's song, “In the death of a woman made slaughtered with her bearing by the corruptor by the hand and art of a surgeon.”
The canto originates from one of the earliest literary texts to address the theme of femicide, inspired by a nineteenth-century crime report. Leopardi expresses profound closeness to the victim, offering a moral defense and articulating a deeply compassionate and personal response.
At the core of the canto lies a radical reflection on the limits of language, on the inability of words to fully convey the victim’s pain and suffering. From this awareness the work takes shape, acknowledging the fragility of art in the face of suffering and finding meaning precisely in the always incomplete attempt to give voice to what cannot be fully said.
