REGGAE FEMINISM or 88 MARCH

The opening day of my summing up exhibition coincided with the Orthodox Easter on April 16, which is celebrated in Montenegro on the same date as in Russia. It was a pure coincidence. I hope no Orthodox believers felt offended by my artworks, texts and title of the show.

The Russian revolution turns 100 in 2017. The Iron Age, the age of wars and conflicts, is over. Enthusiasm and pathos of Modernism faded away like snow in spring. And what about feminism? As a part of the revolutionary agenda, it won constitutional rights for women and also lost its revolutionary zeal. Yet, it is still an urgent issue.
The world we live in has been built by men, and it is still destined to them. Art is the best illustration of it: 99% of nudes on paintings are females, 90% of museum authors are men. Gender inequality is still there, it is a fact. It often stays below the radar as it hides in our mentality. But masculine stereotypes of gender mentality are characteristic of both men, and women alike.
With this project, I want (again) to make people – and women, first and foremost, aware of the need to review their values: does everything we speak of, and even think of, really match our true desires, our nature?
The feminine ability to bear children places women closer to nature. And, at the same time, it gives women humanism. In traditional cultures the woman does not only give birth and accepts children in this world, she also buries the dead, mourns them, showing the way to the other world to the deceased. She seems to be a gatekeeper on the passage between life and death. No surprise then that life always comes first among other values for a woman. There will be no wars and violence when the paradigm of female mentality dominates the world.
Absolutely, the struggle for equality should go on everywhere. Yet, in the new situation, we also need something else – a voice of our own. The music of new time – soul and reggae, not heavy metal.
Discoveries and achievement of women are still questioned or remain unnoticed or simply forgotten. Yet, even if we know the names of great female artists or writers, we usually don’t remember their faces. So, this time I’m going to continue a series of portraits on fabric from the CITY OF WOMEN I began during my previous residence. Besides that, I’ll add sculptural images of the performances of female artists to my project. Yet, now my characters will be placed in an imagined orchard. Montenegro offered me the impression of an orchard in blossom this time. It is like the taste of life. Spring will have no end, it seems…

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