SYNOPSIS
Expelled for misbehaviour, fleeing from radioactivity, unwittingly out of place in a world that doesn’t know what to make of his uniqueness, Martino is a naive and irascible outsider, prone to haemorrhagic outbursts, who travels through time and space, coming across unusual stories and bizarre characters, while stubbornly trying to find his way back home.
THE STORY
Can a woman without a uterus still define herself as a woman? And is a uterus without a woman still a uterus? What happens to a woman without a uterus,
both socially and physically, and what is the purpose of a uterus that is out of place? These and other medical-metaphysical questions are addressed by the visual artist Emanuela Biancuzzi and the artist, musician and music critic Vittore Baroni in a volume that breaks decisively with the traditional patterns of illustrated books, weaving together different meta-narrative registers and
multiple levels of reading in a dazzling phantasmagoria of eclectic graphic and verbal-visual solutions, positioning itself in a no-man’s land between artist’s book and graphic novel. The non-linear, seemingly schizophrenic journey alternates pages of grotesque comedy with fragments of visionary introspection, amidst wild shards of dystopian science fiction and visceral declarations of animalist resistance.Important medical-existential issues – the trauma of cancer surgery, the social pressure on those who cannot and/or do not want to have children – are tackled with the tools of imagination and irony, backed up by specific, wise advice from highly qualified experts who are aptly called upon to present their significant points of view.
In his adventures outside his mother’s body, the young uterus Martino, a sort of self-made Pinocchio made of “waste” organic matter, is an unstable and disturbed character, naive and irascible, embarrassed by his uncontrollable emotional bleedings, unwittingly involved in banal or paradoxical situations that he doesn’t quite know how to deal with. Martino is searching for an iden- tity and a new balance, questioning his own gender and sexual inclinations, feeling terribly inadequate and at times slightly depressed. Subject to sudden mood swings, he gets angry and rebellious, spills and stains, but always man- ages to get by. Adapting to an unfamiliar habitat, the little anti-hero transforms himself into characters from his childhood comic books (from Tintin to Ma- falda, from Dylan Dog to Marvel/DC superheroes), he becomes a trap singer and singer in a hardcore punk band, he meets famous contemporary artists, he meets anatomical formations and pathological phenomena in a surprising journey inside and outside the human body, amidst influences and intertex- tual references from authors such as Mary Shelley, Austin Osman Spare, Max Ernst, Albert Camus, Gilles Deleuze, William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, Kurt Cobain, Piermario Ciani.
THE PROJECT
The idea of Martino L’Uterino was born in 2016 in response to the illustrator’s endless oncological vicissitudes and the need to transform the unknown ele- ments of biological reality into creative, caustic, metaphorical material. After a long period in suspended animation, the project was resumed and developed in 2019 and refined over the following years during the coronavirus lockdown. The final touches were added with the creation of the project’s “sonic back- bone”, thanks to the musical collective Le Forbici di Manitù (Manitù Rossi, Vit- tore Baroni and Ignazio Lago), who, starting from some song-like texts already included in the book, created exciting melodies and joyful, catchy rumbles.
