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Rosse rosse

By Chiara Coppola

Rosse rosse

"Rosse Rosse" positions menstrual blood at the center of the gaze.

While blood saturates visual culture — from religious iconography to cinema — menstrual blood remains largely absent: concealed by modesty, confined by taboo, and steeped in inherited discomfort. Its marginalization reflects a history of representation shaped by patriarchal structures and cultural silencing.

Through staged and intimate compositions, the material properties of menstrual blood are isolated and magnified: density, gloss, viscosity, chromatic intensity. Stripped of euphemism and metaphor, it reveals itself simply as what it is — matter. Presence. Trace.

The material contact with the blood — ordinary yet destabilizing — exposes the tension between familiarity and rejection, normalcy and repulsion. The images neither dramatize nor beautify. They seek neither shock nor sublimation. Instead, they hold the viewer in a suspended space, forcing a recalibration of the gaze.

By choosing menstrual blood as both medium and subject, the work brings to light something organic, underrepresented, yet universal. Here, menstrual blood is not spectacle, symbol, or statement. It is material reality — cyclical, unavoidable, concrete.

Its red insists. It stains. It remains.

20 artworks

2019 - ongoing

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Period Stories

An ongoing collective archive exploring the systemic silence surrounding menstruation. Born as an extension of the Rosse Rosse visual project, this space gathers private realities and unspoken narratives to dismantle a shared societal taboo. You are invited to add your voice. Because dismantling a taboo also means reclaiming our identities, you may choose to sign your contribution or share it anonymously, in whichever language feels most authentic to you.

I asked myself why I had to hide and feel ashamed of something so natural....

Flo — Vacuum-sealed

Panicked, when he asked, “What are you cooking at this hour?”, I replied: “Arroz!”. And I tossed a handful of rice into the steaming water....

Chiara — Rice Salad

On the pristine white cotton of the deep sofa where I had been sitting, a blood-red streak screamed under the glaring lights....

Caro — White Sofa