When the Towel Drops is a video and film installation, and a performance that investigates the censorship of female and queer bodies/desire in postwar Italian Cinema. It compiles and reveals hundreds of archival documents and film scenes that were removed from publicly screened cinema in Italy in the 1950s and 1960s. By editing together scenes that were censored from films such as La Notte and Zabriskie Point by Michelangelo Antonioni, or Brink of Life by Ingmar Bergman, When the Towel Drops Vol.1 I Italy traces a history of the institutional regimentation of female and queer bodies.

When The Towel Drops is a collaboration of Elisa Giardina Papa with Ugandan artist Bathsheba Okwenje and Indian artist Nupur Mathur, and it is authored under the collective name of Radha May.