Ethics in Aesthetics: experiencing women’s rights

In this paper, we describe an interactive exhibition entitled Ballade of Women that explored perspectives on women’s rights. The installation was designed as an immersive experience aimed at engaging visitors to trigger meaningful and personal reflections on women’s rights. Visitors moved through a dynamic environment, where they experienced three themes: violence, emancipation and self-determination, represented by three artworks. Digital representations of the three paintings were fragmented in moving panels. The movement of the panels was determined by the movement and presence of visitors as well as by the input received by online communities discussing the topic of the exhibition. The installation created awareness, and stimulated reflection through a bodily involvement, demonstrating how complex and controversial taking a position on such topics can be. The experience concurred in stimulating and reinforcing a reflection on their relevance, complexity and universality.