Group exhibition – Stich 2 feminist approaches

STICH 2
feminist approaches
window exhibition at
KunstSatellit Berlin
08.03.2021 – 31.03.2021

“ virdzina /private /or public “

Can art and life be separated? Can we recognise the art in life (do we want to) or do
we have to contextualise it for some greater good? The question is, where does the
intertwining of such perspectives lead? Is it the resistance and persistence that keeps
art in life or life in art? Is the built tension between inner and outer life threatening
or promising?
In my search for finding my private and public life, noticing the vague boundaries
that art creates, I recognize the notion of the Virdzina phenomenon. The term
“Virdžina”(Virgin) appears in my life at the end of the last century, getting to know
the film of the director Srdjan Karanovic, filmed in 1991 in Yugoslavia. The story
describes Stevan, a young heir of a family who is lured by the fact that there are too
many female children. Stevan’s own family condemns him to live as a boy, although
he was born as a girl. His family is actually followed by the custom of “swearing
virgins” (“virgin” or “tobelia”) to avoid condemnation of society because it has
exclusively female offspring. There are various reasons for becoming Virginia, and
the Stevan case from the mentioned film is just one of them. It can also be from
purely personal incentives, in the case when young girls do not have the identity of
the sex and the gender with which they were born. In all these cases, I analyze the
patriarchal situation in the mountainous rural areas of the Balkans: Northern
Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro, for which Virdzina’s phenomenology is linked.
Very hilly, inspiring to watch, difficult to live in, where women’s jobs are weaving and
embroidery, and their area is home and private spheres.