Feminist Spaces Journal

Illustration for Feminist Spaces Journal, Florida, US, published July 5, 2025

https://www.feministspacesjournal.org/ 

"Shushing Heads", colored pencils on paper.

My drawing “Shushing Heads” aims to offer a reflection on the different nuances that censorship can take.

I used a mixed technique of pastels, coloured pencils and charcoal on paper to obtain a rough image, with strong contrasts, capable of capturing the viewer’s gaze and creating the effect of a magazine cover. I deeply marked the dark tones of the face of the subject in the foreground and chose a yellow flat and bright background so that the composition of the image recalls the classic photographic close-ups in magazines. The play of light is however inverted: while in the rotogravure photography it is the face that receives the greatest light, here the most intense light is behind the subject. The aim is to create an estrangement but also to suggest an inversion of focus: even if there is a face in the foreground, it is not on what the viewer’s attention is directed to. The woman’s face that dominates the frame is depicted at the moment of extreme opening of the mouth, inside which three monochrome figures are depicted: they are three talking heads, two men and a woman, with microphones in their hands. Leaving the three figures in black and white I created within the same drawing two contrasting graphic levels so as to evoke the effect of a photomontage, of a tampering with the original image.

The purpose of the work is, at the same time, a provocation and an invitation to reflect on what it means to censor. Censorship is not only the total suppression of speech, public communication, or other information; it is also choosing which message is most convenient to convey; how to convey it and to whom to let it be conveyed. From the mouth of the Black woman comes not her own voice but the voices of three white journalists: an example of how information can be tampered with, silencing those to whom one pretends to give a voice.

Hence the title “Shushing Heads”, a play on words between talking heads and the verb to shush.