Artist statement

PRESENCE

On August 29, 1523, Margherita, known as Madregna, was accused of witchcraft.

Tortured with rope, she confessed to practicing sorcery and attending a sabbath.

She was condemned and burned alive at the stake. Her property was seized and

redistributed according to Inquisitorial customs.

Centuries later, her voice still echoes.

Between the 15th and 18th centuries, fear and superstition took root across

Europe, fueling the systematic persecution we now call the witch hunts. These

were not isolated moments of hysteria, but sustained campaigns rooted in

political, religious, and social control. The main targets were women, midwives,

healers, widows, the poor, those who defied the roles assigned to them.

Accusations could arise from almost nothing: a fever, a failed harvest, a

neighbor’s envy. Folk rituals, knowledge of plants, or even physical traits became

evidence of a pact with the devil. Witchcraft was the name given to any form of

female autonomy.

The Inquisition and civil tribunals developed legal systems to prosecute these so-

called witches. Torture was used to extract confessions confirming a worldview

that needed enemies. Manuals like the Malleus Maleficarum shaped both

ideology and method, legitimizing violence in the name of moral order.

Though men and children were also accused, nearly two-thirds of those tried

were women. Their bodies were inspected for “devil’s marks.” Their deaths, by

fire, hanging, or torture, were meant to serve as public warnings. Fear had to be

made visible.

The last execution for witchcraft in Europe was that of Anna Göldi, in 1782, but

the mechanisms of control persisted. In fascist Italy, women who resisted

domestic roles were confined to asylums, labeled “mad,” “malacarne,” or threats

to state ethics. Emotion itself became a pathology.

Even today, the logic of punishment remains. Femicide is the brutal echo of those

fires. Women are still burned alive, symbolically and literally, for refusing

submission. They are killed by partners, ex-partners, family members.

The methods have changed, but the meaning has not.

This is not just history. It is legacy. And it demands reckoning, not in numbers

alone, but in memory, voice, and justice.