She looks like she has had a rough life, full of hardship and violence. How does that first impression make us look at her? It is a drawing from a picture of an arrested person which I found online, an elderly woman with fierce look on her face. She is not defeated, she is not surprised and she is very different from an ideal look for a woman which interests me. I don’t know who she is, what she did or what has been done to her. Her face is a story. We let our imagination wonder and wander when we let it and are able to, assumptions and stereotypes lead our thinking very easily. Feelings of contempt and repulsion, feeling of fear, of pity, wanting to judge her on the spot come so quick and toss her aside as unwanted now that she is captured.
oil pastel on paper, drunk passed out/why women drink?2015
Without her she gets made, a kind of other, malformation of sex and an assumption. She needs persona and identity of her own. How does she do that? What does she make of herself, of this, of this lot, of this lottery ticket. Out of these forms of hers she must build herself, of pieces a misty character, that makes you feel cold inside. Her reputation precedes her, irregular person, despicable, untrustworthy, she is what you heard you think you heard. You made her in your mind via your and people’s speech, exchange of ideas. Isn’t that her? Talk works like gas, it is intoxicating and vulgar. Violence taking the least effortless way. Story of her could be continued this way unless she would not act on her defense, get that mess into her own hands, clay and a piece of bone. She needs herself to oppose, resist and defend herself. Nobody else does it. Nobody else is interested in her life, her self, what it really is, what she really is like and able to do.
Her reality is not interesting to anyone but herself, she lives it, not you and makes it. She makes her life even though there is discouragement, contempt, laughter, ill talk, threat, there is so little faith in her that it is unbelievable and unbearable. To accept passively what goes on and on because others accept it, it suits them and it is normal, ill is the norm. They say there is nothing one can do for her. It is not an option to change that. That is not true. It is her exceptional quality, resistance, energy of hers that changes anything.
Evaluations, descriptions, adjectives, measurements and comparisons, faults, flaws, drawbacks, qualities we need to place someone in that tight spot to feel powerful and someone else small, qualities we have made and what are they worth, how do qualities needed change anything? Any inner strength there? We imagine, make, consume and refine ourselves as well as we can. We consume others to make ourselves. To find that strength there to do better is so little.
She is not right. There is a right way to be. Characteristics that are stated as a fact without further evidence and hearsay is all. Demonizing her to people who listen, who ask without her, without her she gets made as if she died. Character of mist that makes you feel cold inside. Is this the same world we inhabit: you speak of me but you do not confront me nor speak to me. How little respect there is, how little trust. She is what you heard as a fact. To think otherwise would be unthinkable, unthinkable pleasure, envious, joy of dragging her down speaks mountains: She is not right. She is not right. To kill is to entertain. It is to better yourself, to paint a picture of malicious woman is to draw a separating line. Pointing her out from above, from a distance, from acclaimed perfection, from accepted shameless perfection undeniable. To know her is to say what she is: she is loud, she is noisy, she is quiet, she is broken, she is tense, she is useless, she is irrational, she is shameless, she is lost, she is dead. How stupid she is. Stupidity being something very human. Not understanding why.
Mies ajeli taksilla Altasta Hettaan mittarissa tuhansia Norjan kruunuja. Lapinmiehen puvussa hän lauloi koko matkan, ja heilui edestakaisin. Lumimyrsky oli alkanut. Katuvaloja ei ollut. Naisen hiukset, rinnat, tuoksuvat häpykarvat, joista laulu kertoi, huvitti taksikuskia. Jalkatilassa ruuvimeisseli kieri edestakaisin.
Pohjoisessa saa suihinoton pöydän alta. Vähäpukeiset naiset vaivihkaa katoavat juomiensa alle, avaavat vetoketjun ja ottavat elimen suuhunsa. Sitä voi neljäntuulenhatussa olla, että nyt menee joka kulmaan ja klubin valot välkkyvät sopivasti niin, ettei kasvoja näy.
Svetlana istui vähissä vaatteissa tyhjässä tilassa lattialla pullon kanssa, huuhtoen makua suustaan pikkuhiljaa. Vodka maistui sopivan tuliselta. Se poltti joka muiston ja hetken pöydän pöytien alla. Hänen reitensä pullistelevat sukkanauhoissa, verkkosukkahousuissa, rinnat rintaliiveissä. Sää on ulkona. Myrsky ei ulotu sisälle ja sitä voi katsella lattialta, kun päivän työ on tehty. Murmanskiin ei jäänyt ketään eikä mitään. Hän ei puhunut pohjoisen miesten kanssa susista tai niiden oikeuksista. Oli juonut mitä muutkin olivat juoneet. Täällä miehissä on paljon rakkautta, he haluavat paljon rakkautta.
Svetlana nukkui taljan alla narisevalla sohvalla. Täällä aurinko ei noussut vielä pitkään aikaan.
Paintings done by me during art school 1998. As an art student I was very influenced by my experiences as a young woman and by many female artists who fearlessly had explored femininity, double standards in art and difficulties in being a woman. How there has been this message that one should be ashamed of one’s body, its fluids, functions, the way body looks, what it is for and what it does. I have been fascinated by how little we have control over our bodies, over how it is seen, commented, looked at and what does it do, the body, that I am, but that has a will of its own. For example having had hugely painful period has been a one thing turning my life upside down once a month and this flooding phenomenon that is a taboo all over the world today still remains mysteriously disgusting and horrifying to many. All this is painful and remains so when female body is obscene and feared, so something one wants to understand and respect should be the case. What is the shame there, what is the dirtiness and scare?
Since there are people today who feel disgusted by menstruation art, that this issue is now called such, I must again put this forward, that women’s bodies belong to women and they do what they want with their bodies and menstruation being one thing women experience in its messiness and pain, shame and irritation, all it brings to us, as private as it may be, it is an everyday normal bodily function and a very important one. The leaking body, that has a way of its own is gorgeous and menstruation should be respected instead of felt disgusted by. And blood is not blue..
Majakollektiivi Timanttimetsä 