Vernissage: SATURDAY, October 26 at 14:00
Open: October 27 - December 1
HÅ GAMLE PRESTEGARD
Mon-Fri 11:00-15:00, Sat-Sun 12:00-17:00
Håvegen 347, 4365 Nærbø, Norway
www.hagamleprestegard.no
ticket: 60 NOK
'artists: Kai Kaljo, Marge Monko, Liina Siib, Anna-Stina Treumund
2013 marks the 100th anniversary of granting full women’s suffrage in
Norway, and if we discount the Grand Duchy of Finland, which was part of
the Russian Empire at that time, Norway was the first country in Europe to
grant women the right to vote. This exhibition, titled I Don’t Eat Flowers!,
is partially organized to mark this event. In many ways, Estonia is a typical
Eastern European country, where many fears and prejudices continue to
exist in regard to feminism, and sometimes there are even outright anti-
feminist reactions. Despite the political fragility of feminism, as a position,
and the constant attacks on it, through the years, several very intriguing
artists have emerged who define themselves as feminists, and whose work
cannot be separated from this position.
The title of the exhibition is borrowed from Marge Monko’s poster I Don’t Eat Flowers (2011). The poster depicts the artist in a pose that is borrowed from one of the most iconic images of a female worker – Howard J. Miller’s propaganda poster called We Can Do It!, from 1943, which became widely known in the 1980s. Although the poster probably depicts 17-year-old Geraldine Hoff, who worked in a factory in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the image is also known as Rosie the Riveter. Although several prototypes have been suggested for Rosie the Riveter, this was the name given to American women who worked in factories during World War II. The poster, which was initially used to raise the morale of the workers at Westinghouse Electric plants, became a symbol of the women’s movement during the last decades of the previous century, which was used as an image to increase women’s self-awareness and self-confidence in the course of various campaigns.
In Monko’s paraphrasing, we see the artist standing in Hoff’s famous pose, against a background of the tall buildings in Tallinn’s capitalistic heart. The phrase “I don’t eat flowers!” has been added to the image, which alludes to the custom of giving flowers to women on International Women’s Day. Monko herself has directed attention to the following slogan, which was carried during a strike at a textile mill, in Massachusetts, in 1912: “We want bread, but we want roses too!” Thus, this is an image that is strongly associated with the history of the women’s movement; and working
with the history, memory, pop culture images and archival materials of the women’s movement is something that always accompanies Marge Monko’s feminist works of art.
In recent years, labor has become one of the leitmotifs of Monko’s work, which she treats from a specifically feminist perspective by creating connections ranging from Elfriede Jelinek to labor legislation. Women have often been a focal point as clearly the weakest party in these relations. In
The title of the exhibition is borrowed from Marge Monko’s poster I Don’t Eat Flowers (2011). The poster depicts the artist in a pose that is borrowed from one of the most iconic images of a female worker – Howard J. Miller’s propaganda poster called We Can Do It!, from 1943, which became widely known in the 1980s. Although the poster probably depicts 17-year-old Geraldine Hoff, who worked in a factory in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the image is also known as Rosie the Riveter. Although several prototypes have been suggested for Rosie the Riveter, this was the name given to American women who worked in factories during World War II. The poster, which was initially used to raise the morale of the workers at Westinghouse Electric plants, became a symbol of the women’s movement during the last decades of the previous century, which was used as an image to increase women’s self-awareness and self-confidence in the course of various campaigns.
In Monko’s paraphrasing, we see the artist standing in Hoff’s famous pose, against a background of the tall buildings in Tallinn’s capitalistic heart. The phrase “I don’t eat flowers!” has been added to the image, which alludes to the custom of giving flowers to women on International Women’s Day. Monko herself has directed attention to the following slogan, which was carried during a strike at a textile mill, in Massachusetts, in 1912: “We want bread, but we want roses too!” Thus, this is an image that is strongly associated with the history of the women’s movement; and working
with the history, memory, pop culture images and archival materials of the women’s movement is something that always accompanies Marge Monko’s feminist works of art.
In recent years, labor has become one of the leitmotifs of Monko’s work, which she treats from a specifically feminist perspective by creating connections ranging from Elfriede Jelinek to labor legislation. Women have often been a focal point as clearly the weakest party in these relations. In
the photo film Nora’s Sisters (2009), she links 1970s propaganda photos of
the Kreenholm Manufacture in Narva with a scene from Jelinek’s play with
the same title, where Nora arrives at the factory to warn the women about
the factory closing. However, the latter are absolutely convinced of the
protective mechanisms of the social democratic system and do not take
her seriously.
The work was completed at the time when the Kreenholm textile mill
in Narva ceased operations, and the last 400 workers, of the one-time workforce of 12,000, most of whom were women, became unemployed. Monko often returns to the factory motif in her work. 8 Hours (2013) is
a series of photo collages, which are definitely connected to this motif. This time, the focus is on the Rauaniidu factory, which was called the Red Dawn during the Soviet era. As the artist herself says, the photos originate from a film archive, and were taken between 1919 and 1934, during the first period of independence: “Compared to the Soviet era photos of the same factory, these are in a totally different idiom – they are calm and static; the workers on the pictures seem well-mannered and amicable. Yet, quite a few strikes took place in Rauaniidu, during the 1930s, to protest wage cuts and layoffs.”13 In the collages, the artist has used slogans from the history of the labor movement, and the title of the work alludes to the struggle for an 8-hour workday, started by Robert Owen in 1810, which has dimmed now, in the era of precarious work, since there are no clear boundaries between work and leisure time.
In 1997, Kai Kaljo made a video, which is one of the most famous works of East-European feminist art. Kai Kaljo stands before a camera, against the symbolic background of an easel, and speaks into the camera, with every sentence accompanied by off-camera laughter. She says: “Hello, my name is Kai Kaljo, I am an Estonian artist. My weight is 92 kilograms; I am 37 years of age but still living with my mother. I am not married. I am working at the Estonian Academy of Arts as a teacher for 90 dollars per month. I think that the most important thing being an artist is freedom. I am very happy.”
By positioning herself as an artist, citizen and woman, Kaljo was able to
fit the central issues of the entire Eastern European set of problems into a minute and a half, and to create an image that spoke to everyone, from the Balkans to the Baltics. Thus, it is no wonder that this is one of the most iconic and powerful works of art to set forth the post-Soviet situation, which, at the nuclear level, includes most of the motifs of this exhibition.
The work was completed at the time when the Kreenholm textile mill
in Narva ceased operations, and the last 400 workers, of the one-time workforce of 12,000, most of whom were women, became unemployed. Monko often returns to the factory motif in her work. 8 Hours (2013) is
a series of photo collages, which are definitely connected to this motif. This time, the focus is on the Rauaniidu factory, which was called the Red Dawn during the Soviet era. As the artist herself says, the photos originate from a film archive, and were taken between 1919 and 1934, during the first period of independence: “Compared to the Soviet era photos of the same factory, these are in a totally different idiom – they are calm and static; the workers on the pictures seem well-mannered and amicable. Yet, quite a few strikes took place in Rauaniidu, during the 1930s, to protest wage cuts and layoffs.”13 In the collages, the artist has used slogans from the history of the labor movement, and the title of the work alludes to the struggle for an 8-hour workday, started by Robert Owen in 1810, which has dimmed now, in the era of precarious work, since there are no clear boundaries between work and leisure time.
In 1997, Kai Kaljo made a video, which is one of the most famous works of East-European feminist art. Kai Kaljo stands before a camera, against the symbolic background of an easel, and speaks into the camera, with every sentence accompanied by off-camera laughter. She says: “Hello, my name is Kai Kaljo, I am an Estonian artist. My weight is 92 kilograms; I am 37 years of age but still living with my mother. I am not married. I am working at the Estonian Academy of Arts as a teacher for 90 dollars per month. I think that the most important thing being an artist is freedom. I am very happy.”
By positioning herself as an artist, citizen and woman, Kaljo was able to
fit the central issues of the entire Eastern European set of problems into a minute and a half, and to create an image that spoke to everyone, from the Balkans to the Baltics. Thus, it is no wonder that this is one of the most iconic and powerful works of art to set forth the post-Soviet situation, which, at the nuclear level, includes most of the motifs of this exhibition.
In a situation where it seemed that freedom had been achieved, people
were standing empty-handed on the ruins of a collapsed society; they
were working in factories, on kolkhozes, and elsewhere, for non-existent
wages; and these places of employment were successively being
privatized, dismantled, or were just disappearing.
At the same time, the enthusiastic, nationalistically-minded politicians demanded that ever more children be produced for the state, which could barely remain standing. During the Soviet era, there had been national apartment queues because there were no apartments; now a real estate market developed, but with the wages that were being paid, it was hard to rent, moreover to buy living space. The attitude toward women’s rights was very problematic, extending all the way to anti-feminist and ultra conservative reactions. Any kind of combative position – be it in the context of labor unions, social rights or any other field of activity – was interpreted as a Soviet legacy. While, at the same time, a certain part of the society unambiguously internalized ultra liberal pragmatism as the only conceivable position for coping in a society that was being lead mostly by the generation of those in their twenties – the so-called “winners.”
Thus, Loser has an autobiographical impact on many people, because they saw themselves in exactly the same way – as underpaid failures – in the context of the capitalist model of success. Fourteen years later, Anna- Stina Treumund produced a video and photo installation, titled Loser 2011, as a paraphrasing of Kaljo’s legendary work. Treumund borrowed the format from Kaljo’s video – a self-portrait, short statement, off-camera laughter. However, she embodies an Estonian male construction worker, who announces that he has three children, all with different women, a four- room apartment, a car with leather seats, and that he hates immigrants and homos. An additional three photos are part of the combination, where the same motifs are divided among three characters, all of which are portrayed by the artist herself.
If, in her video, Kaljo appears as herself and sees herself, in some sense, as the victim, but still allows herself to laugh at herself somewhat, then Treumund’s game is more complicated. On the one hand, as the representative of a sexual minority, she adopts the role of a man as a queer artist, and identifies with the normative, stereotypical mind-set. Treumund’s character believes that he is in control, and that he is the master of his life, since he has identified himself with mainstream dreams of success, which he unfortunately cannot achieve, but he knows very well who is at fault. Although the contrast is perhaps too explicit, we can say that Treumund turns Kaljo’s Loser around, in both the direct and indirect
At the same time, the enthusiastic, nationalistically-minded politicians demanded that ever more children be produced for the state, which could barely remain standing. During the Soviet era, there had been national apartment queues because there were no apartments; now a real estate market developed, but with the wages that were being paid, it was hard to rent, moreover to buy living space. The attitude toward women’s rights was very problematic, extending all the way to anti-feminist and ultra conservative reactions. Any kind of combative position – be it in the context of labor unions, social rights or any other field of activity – was interpreted as a Soviet legacy. While, at the same time, a certain part of the society unambiguously internalized ultra liberal pragmatism as the only conceivable position for coping in a society that was being lead mostly by the generation of those in their twenties – the so-called “winners.”
Thus, Loser has an autobiographical impact on many people, because they saw themselves in exactly the same way – as underpaid failures – in the context of the capitalist model of success. Fourteen years later, Anna- Stina Treumund produced a video and photo installation, titled Loser 2011, as a paraphrasing of Kaljo’s legendary work. Treumund borrowed the format from Kaljo’s video – a self-portrait, short statement, off-camera laughter. However, she embodies an Estonian male construction worker, who announces that he has three children, all with different women, a four- room apartment, a car with leather seats, and that he hates immigrants and homos. An additional three photos are part of the combination, where the same motifs are divided among three characters, all of which are portrayed by the artist herself.
If, in her video, Kaljo appears as herself and sees herself, in some sense, as the victim, but still allows herself to laugh at herself somewhat, then Treumund’s game is more complicated. On the one hand, as the representative of a sexual minority, she adopts the role of a man as a queer artist, and identifies with the normative, stereotypical mind-set. Treumund’s character believes that he is in control, and that he is the master of his life, since he has identified himself with mainstream dreams of success, which he unfortunately cannot achieve, but he knows very well who is at fault. Although the contrast is perhaps too explicit, we can say that Treumund turns Kaljo’s Loser around, in both the direct and indirect
sense, by stereotyping the stereotypical, and by letting the off-camera
voice laugh at him. As Hanno Soans had said, the laughter that we hear in
Treumund’s work is no longer liberating, but rather haunting: “On the one
hand, the transition society has produced a large social element, an entire
mass awareness, the emancipation myths of which produce anonymous,
scolding laughter at the expense of those who have been cast out by
society (and who are statistically the majority). On the other hand, this is a sign of a society that has adopted western-style social pragmatism, but
has not adopted a system of social values.”
Treumund’s other work at this exhibition is also connected to the work of another artist, namely, to three drawings titled One, Two and Together, by Marju Mutsu (1941-1980), who was active in the 1970s. Not a single lesbian artist is known from the Soviet era (or even from earlier times, for that matter), when homosexuality was criminally punishable, and lesbian motifs are seen very infrequently in Estonian art. The rest of Marju Mutsu’s work and her personal life do not allow any far-reaching conclusions to be drawn about her sexual orientation. However, these three drawings, which Treumund restages as homage in her photo series, can indisputably be interpreted as being homoerotic. At the same time, the need for a history, to find forerunners, is something that has clearly come to the fore in recent years in queer art. There is no doubt that this written history is an attempt to regain a political, suppressed and repressed past, the proof of which can only be found by collecting oral history or researching criminal files.
If we try to roughly generalize, then Monko and Treumund are both, for different reasons, interested in history, while the focus of Liina Siib’s work is the feminine perception of space and body. The titles of the installations and photographic series exhibited here – A Woman Takes Little Space (2008-2011), A Room of One’s Own (2011) and Averse Body (2007), which include direct and indirect references to Griselda Pollock, Virginia Woolf and Jerzy Grotowski, speak for themselves. The photo series, A Woman Takes Little Space is comprised of small photos of women in various workplaces – factories, hospitals, stores, lunchrooms, schools, police stations – that were taken during a period of three years. This series points time and again to the fact that Estonia has the largest wage gap between the genders in the European Union, and to the still popular chauvinist belief that women need less pay, less room, less ... everything.15 At the same time, the poetic quality, certain sadness and the ability or inability
Treumund’s other work at this exhibition is also connected to the work of another artist, namely, to three drawings titled One, Two and Together, by Marju Mutsu (1941-1980), who was active in the 1970s. Not a single lesbian artist is known from the Soviet era (or even from earlier times, for that matter), when homosexuality was criminally punishable, and lesbian motifs are seen very infrequently in Estonian art. The rest of Marju Mutsu’s work and her personal life do not allow any far-reaching conclusions to be drawn about her sexual orientation. However, these three drawings, which Treumund restages as homage in her photo series, can indisputably be interpreted as being homoerotic. At the same time, the need for a history, to find forerunners, is something that has clearly come to the fore in recent years in queer art. There is no doubt that this written history is an attempt to regain a political, suppressed and repressed past, the proof of which can only be found by collecting oral history or researching criminal files.
If we try to roughly generalize, then Monko and Treumund are both, for different reasons, interested in history, while the focus of Liina Siib’s work is the feminine perception of space and body. The titles of the installations and photographic series exhibited here – A Woman Takes Little Space (2008-2011), A Room of One’s Own (2011) and Averse Body (2007), which include direct and indirect references to Griselda Pollock, Virginia Woolf and Jerzy Grotowski, speak for themselves. The photo series, A Woman Takes Little Space is comprised of small photos of women in various workplaces – factories, hospitals, stores, lunchrooms, schools, police stations – that were taken during a period of three years. This series points time and again to the fact that Estonia has the largest wage gap between the genders in the European Union, and to the still popular chauvinist belief that women need less pay, less room, less ... everything.15 At the same time, the poetic quality, certain sadness and the ability or inability
of the subjects to come to grips with the photographic situation have
often been ignored by critics. The space in these photos is almost always
defined, restricted, small, and even if there is a kind of grandeur, like in a sewing factory or bridal salon, this is illusory. In the salon, the space is
enlarged by the mirrors on the wall, and a sewing factory is comprised of
thousands of small sewing machine trestles, where lots of women work. A Room of One’s Own, a spatial installation with photo and video, which borrows its title from an essay with fictional elements, by Virginia
Woolf, which is a feminist classic. Siib has solved the work as a living
room installation, on the walls and TV of which we see views of different
apartments/rooms and women... well, the women in these rooms taking
up little space. The lack of private space, which belongs only to them, is
something that most women continue to experience throughout their lives.
Averse Body is a video installation that has been named after a quotation by Jerzy Grotowski, who thought that prostitutes have a certain aversion to their bodies and, “that aversion, that lack of trust (or misplaced trust), causes a split personality.” This Grotowski quote motivated Siib to
create this work, because she was really interested in what the attitudes of prostitutes are to their work, their bodies, men, love, etc. The 40-minute film is comprised of anonymous interviews with Tallinn prostitutes. The installation also includes drawings of roses the artist asked all girls to make. When analyzing Siib’s work, Lithuanian art critic Agnė Narušytė did not see any traces of an aversion to their bodies, or any greater occurrence of split personalities than in “ordinary” women: “What the prostitutes talk about is the incessant masquerade designed to attract male attention. As if a woman has no shape, no body, before she sees herself in the imaginary eye of the other. In this prostitutes are no different than other women Liina Siib has depicted. Surrounded by things, women present their textured surfaces to the camera, their selves hidden under the protective layer of make-up, colorful clothes, uniforms, jobs, professions”.17 What is truly frightening in Siib’s work is not that the prostitutes might be different than “ordinary” women, but the opposite, that they are not different at all.
In the context of this exhibition, the curator’s own gender cannot be ignored, and it would be wrong not to mention it here. What right does an ordinary white heterosexual male even have to compile such an exhibition? How can an exhibition be organized without doing so from a dominantly
Averse Body is a video installation that has been named after a quotation by Jerzy Grotowski, who thought that prostitutes have a certain aversion to their bodies and, “that aversion, that lack of trust (or misplaced trust), causes a split personality.” This Grotowski quote motivated Siib to
create this work, because she was really interested in what the attitudes of prostitutes are to their work, their bodies, men, love, etc. The 40-minute film is comprised of anonymous interviews with Tallinn prostitutes. The installation also includes drawings of roses the artist asked all girls to make. When analyzing Siib’s work, Lithuanian art critic Agnė Narušytė did not see any traces of an aversion to their bodies, or any greater occurrence of split personalities than in “ordinary” women: “What the prostitutes talk about is the incessant masquerade designed to attract male attention. As if a woman has no shape, no body, before she sees herself in the imaginary eye of the other. In this prostitutes are no different than other women Liina Siib has depicted. Surrounded by things, women present their textured surfaces to the camera, their selves hidden under the protective layer of make-up, colorful clothes, uniforms, jobs, professions”.17 What is truly frightening in Siib’s work is not that the prostitutes might be different than “ordinary” women, but the opposite, that they are not different at all.
In the context of this exhibition, the curator’s own gender cannot be ignored, and it would be wrong not to mention it here. What right does an ordinary white heterosexual male even have to compile such an exhibition? How can an exhibition be organized without doing so from a dominantly
masculine, or even a chauvinist position, or – how to curate without
curating? How to let the artists speak instead of speaking myself? But this
is approximately the way that I have tried to compile this exhibition – to
show as many works as possible from the same artists, so that instead
of the curators voice, the voice of the intriguing and interesting artists is heard. I really hope that I have succeeded.
of the curators voice, the voice of the intriguing and interesting artists is heard. I really hope that I have succeeded.
tarung jago
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