Italia: Open to meraviglia at the intersection of art, gender and tourism discourses

Abstract

This article explores the status and role of Venus within the Italia: Open to meraviglia campaign, with a focus on a dataset of visual texts extracted from the venereitalia23 Instagram profile over the initial year of its publication. The adopted integrated framework encompasses the grammar of visual design by Kress and van Leeuwen, the interdiscursivity model developed by Bhatia and a scale for measuring sexism in tourism representations by Pritchard. The questions that guide the research are the following: How is venereitalia23 visually represented across the Instagram profile? How do art and gender discourses intersect with one another within the campaign? Italia: Open to meraviglia employs an originally aesthetic icon by Sandro Botticelli. The creative solution may be seen as paying a tribute to Italian heritage. Similarly, the choice, coding and use of Venus as the ambassador and influencer may be read as challenging stereotyped gender representation in tourism discourse. However, the results show that the graphic configuration venereitalia23 achieves in the virtual dimension (through gestures, actions, clothing, gaze, size of frame, information value) makes it resemble a doll-influencer. Ultimately, the campaign fails in both celebrating the artistic heritage and emancipating the female role, as both are exploited and objectified.