8TH OF MARCH

On the 8th of March, we celebrate International Women's Day. In 1910 the first worker women's conference was held, where German socialist and feminist Clara Zetkin declared the 8th of March as an international women’s day. Before this, in 1908, in New York, a manifestation calling for social justice and fair working conditions took place. In post-soviet Georgia, we still celebrate this day. But stripped from the significance of fighting spirit, it turned into thornless flowers and glittery paper-wrapped masquerade, satisfying the passions of masculine culture, and compensating women's obedience with gifts. In truth, the 8th of March is the least about the binary relationship between women and men.

The market also adopted and transformed this date: "What to gift to the beloved woman on 8th of March”, “get discount, make your loved one happy" we hear from endless commercials. Consciously or not, this awakens a spark of rejection and anger in us, which can burst into a raging fire. We acknowledge this cannot correct violence and lost voices, that every oppression requires to be battle-ready. Following, it becomes clear that in the last decade, the 8th of March is returning to its historical meaning.

The 8th of March is political in its meaning. It is a historical day of women fighting to defend their rights and for equality. Fight against exploitation and oppression, patriarchal, heteronormative system, family, religion, capitalist state, and ideological organs are creating.

Patriarchy and capitalism come hand in hand and operate as one enormous evil organism, but the fact is, defeating one will not exterminate the other and vice-versa. In Georgia, women have to face different problems, hardships, challenges, and oppression, because of womanhood. In the patriarchal system for women, every oppression doubles. Every day this system, built on women suffering, is killing another victim. This faulty culture has roots spread in every social and economic class. The system has different methods to oppress women based on their social class, ethnicity, age, or sexual orientation.

In Georgia, women's work is the least valued. Women have to work twice as hard at home, which is never seen as work and gets labelled as women's natural feature. At work, women get a smaller wage, and systematically are victims of moral, emotional, and physical abuse.

In Georgian reality, sexual harassments and rapes increase, poverty and unemployment are on the rise too. Throughout the years more women have to leave the country, sustain the family, and also get away from domestic violence. Fight for equality, against oppression, to own our bodies still goes on and women, with a different class, ethnic, religious or age groups should unite to win a fight against this problem, against heteronormative culture. 

Xosilita -  Medea (Manifesto) 

Every year on 8th of march I share this text of Keren. I believe this manifest speaks fully about the pain and challenges we as women experience daily. The text directly and strictly reflects it all, I don’t see any need to add something. I just wanted to make a neat visualisation of it being fully aware of the current situation regarding women all across the world.

^{Text: Keren Batok
Music: Saphileaum - Echoes of the Physical World} 

 

Salome Jokhadze - Untitled

I was born as a big baby, other moms in the hospital where I was born, asked my mom not to lay me next to their babies because that way they would look tiny. My size scares people as if it has something to do with my ambitions. Nobody wants you to be bigger than what they see of you. My city wants me to be small, talk small, think small, love small, aspire to be small. But I’m a big girl, you cant shrink me, my voice or my heart. I walk with my big feet happy knowing I’m still growing.

Elene Pichkhadze - Untitled

I often work with topics of femininity and sexuality in my practice. Feminine nature has a very strong and intense reflection on my work as it authentically expresses tenderness, aggression, and strength simultaneously. In general, the word "femininity" is associated with great power for me, but also with great pain. I often associate femininity with nature.

There is also motives of motherhood and pregnancy that represents women's connection to nature, a transitional state between humanity and ardour. I consider the process of pregnancy to be very magical and collective. I try to capture such an image of a woman that might be provocative, arrogant, self-confident, not ideal, aggressive and fragile.

Mano Svanidze - Five Second Rule

"Have you heard of the Five Second Rule? When food falls down, if you pick it up before five seconds have passed, it’s safe to eat. This is how we live, not letting ourselves down for too long."

Georgia remains a conservative country, where hate and aggression towards sexual minorities are common. Hiding would be the instinctive thing to do, but not everyone can afford it.Having complicated and violent life journeys, many transgender women end up homeless and in order to survive, become sex workers. Georgia has been at the forefront of the movement towards more inclusiveness in the South Caucasus region. Its government has been striving towards closer ties with Europe, and this determination has led to improvements in the overall human rights situation, and more specifically of the human rights of LGBTI people.

This progress in the legal sphere is undeniable. However, despite the existence of laws and guidelines prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of sexualorientation and gender identity, discrimination and violence against LGBTI people continue and the everyday lives of members of the LGBTI community are a far cry from this paper reality. Among the most vulnerable are those who identify as transgender.

Some of the manifestations of structural and systemic violence that transgender women face on a daily basis are: denial of employment, absence of legal recognition of their gender, inaccessibility of all things related to transition, excommunication by families and communities, unwillingness of house owners to rent out living space to them, verbal and physical violence wherever they go. This photo story is my attempt to share the stories of these women. They chose not to give up, but to live and somehow survive in an environment where they are most unwelcome.

God Era -  Eat My Parts

A woman's body has been and remains - a tool in men's hands in the patriarchal society. They use our bodies to make children; pleasure themselves, and create art. Nini Goderidzes Wall object is a work of beauty of body through the female gaze, that finds its beauty through its intestines, with the faecal matter - places invisible to men. Parts undesirable for men get symbiotic with canvas and become the main passion for the Artist.

Dali - Copenhagen Blue

"Society Creature
Song to myself and every other creature made by society
Ask yourself cross-legged, smoking cigarette
Ask yourself your favourite colour
Ask until you find Copenhagen blue on your bleached face in the supermarket."

 

Uta Bekaia - Gradation

„Gradation” was presented on 28 November 2019 in Tbilisi aimed at observing the International Trans Day of Remembrance. After a year and a half, the show is present in Batumi.2020 was one of the worst years: the pandemic took millions of lives; those, who survived were forced to isolate and lock themselves at home. The lives of many transgender people got rougher: they were left without income, unable to pay rent for homes they could lock themselves in.

Standing opposite the gray tones of reality, the theatrical world is at once the subject of Ute Bekaia’s creative research and the lifestyle of transgender individuals. The exhibition proves visitors with the opportunity to take part in the everyday processes of trans people: from the harsh gaze of the city’s daylight to ritualized transformations, culminating in grotesque emancipation.

^{Artist: Uta Bekaia, Poem: Elene Pasuri, Audio: Irakli Shonia; Video: Giorgi Kapanadze; Text by Nika Nadirashvili, Gradation was developed at the discretion of Women’s Initiatives Supporting Group (WISG)., The Project ის supported by Propaganda network; Contemporary Art Space, Batumi, Thanks to Amanda Tako Nata Gabriela}

Elene Lapiashvili -  Foreign Bodies

I often think about my relationship with food, the process of digestion, and waste. I consider the habits and attitudes that people have towards their stool to be intriguing.This raises the question of morality, and makes us ask ourselves what is considered “normal” in society? At the same time, it can be an allegory of human waste towards nature. My video shows the cycle of processing machines. This process creates ambivalent feelings: Pain, disgust, suffocation, but at the same time pleasure, relief, climax, and satisfaction.

_{Sound by Rati Eradze.}

 

Elene Kaikhosroshvili -  Do you remember feeling ashamed that you exist at all?

Don’t you remember being teenage girls and the way you were left all alone with yourselves, your sexuality, and adolescent and grown men's still obscure interest in you?

Do you remember not being able to say why were you crying, could not tell what happened in an underground passage, in a bus, in a, when unwittingly, you sat in a front seat, in a school bathroom, in an elevator (the list is infinite)?

Do you remember being ashamed, when you were a child and an older man sitting next to you unzipped his pants? Do you remember, the shame you felt for showing your knees, sitting in a spot where men could have thought you wanted him to sit next to you? Then you felt shame that you did not stand up when he sat, then you did not stand up before he unzipped his pants, then you did not stand up when he unzipped his pants? Do you remember feeling ashamed that you exist at all?

Do you remember how easily manipulated you were when you were a little girl? When older men and boys were texting you, Do you remember how blinding it was and you could not understand if you even had the right to reject this “honor”?

Have you heard how grown-ups say that children should get informed t h e m s e l v e s about what is sex, when are they harassed, where people are not allowed to touch them without consent, what does it mean when on a bus, men sitting next to them watch them and unzip their pants? Have you heard how they say, that "Modern children can teach us instead?"

They said the same about you and me. They felt the same shame as children and did not want to be further ashamed talking about it. As a result, they left us alone with our shame, that we feel only because we exist in the body of a woman.

We act the same. We avoid talking about it and as a result, she who must not be ashamed feels shame. And who should be ashamed, fearless, and uninhibited still takes advantage of little girls’ naivety and jerks off next to a little girl in a bus.

Tamuna Chabashvili -  Supra of Her Own

Every day, I met with women who were beaten, raped, married by force, homeless, whose children could not be healed, and who worked endless days. I talked with them and recorded interviews in order to collect data for my PhD in anthropology. But one day something changed in me. “What am I doing? What is it all for?” I started asking myself. I felt that I could no longer collect these stories as one gathers mushrooms after the autumn rain. Suddenly I understood that I wanted everybody around me, here and now, to listen to these voices and feel as disturbed as I was. I wanted all of them – and especially people with perfect make-up sitting in restaurants, and slowly drinking their Martinis in the rythm of thier bright futures  –  to listen to these stories…

Supra of Her Own, an exhibition about gender-based violence against women in Georgia, is a collaboration between an artist Tamuna Chabashvili, an anthropologist Agnieszka Dudrak, the Georgian NGO Anti-Violence Network of Georgia, and the Independent Group of Domestic Violence Survivors “გესმით ქალის ხმა?!” (Do You Hear the Woman’s Voice?!). Supra of Her Own is an exhibition about the invisibility of women’s painful experiences and about novel ways of making these public. The exhibition does not aim to create an exhaustive list of the different types of gender-based violence against heterosexual women, but points at its diversity and encourages women to speak about and interpret these experiences. 

Natia Gvianishvili -  Change we wanted to bring was worth fighting

Reclaiming the 8th of March from a trivial celebration to a political struggle day was first discussed in 2011. That year, we hit the streets with a larger feminist protest on women’s reproductive and bodily rights for the first time. The decision was logical because many of us had experienced the economic crisis, seen women working hard, while men played dominoes instead of taking care of the children. Many of us had women around us who went to Greece and Italy, sometimes travelling in the bus's luggage compartments, to provide for their families, while their husbands spent their hard-earned money on entertainment.

Despite all that, we were still told that men are the head of the family, that they should be obeyed. This is why we felt like the change we wanted to bring was worth fighting. If not us, who? Nothing special was happening at that time. Some people moderately demanded an abortion ban. It was still embarrassing to buy condoms. Women in politics and power positions were not taken seriously, and there was no public opposition to sexism and homo/bi/transphobia. This is not surprising when women’s rights organizations were drowning in work and, on the other hand, depended on the State in the hope of reforms.

For this reason, we decided to come out as a loose, informal initiative to help shape public opinion. We succeeded. After this first march, the Independent Group of Feminists took the shape of a collective, and we started discussing that we needed to reclaim the 8th of March.

Our fight was political, and the history of the 8th of March is political. It is not tied to a specific historical event but rather represents the voice of women’s movement throughout the history.

A lot has changed since this first demonstration. Ten years may not be too long, but when I look at the photos, I see a different person – an idealist, that hasn’t burned out yet, thinks that she can move mountains, has a vague understanding of what depression is, and does not believe that she will ever leave the country. 

I also see in those photos that people may change, but the fight remains the same. The only difference being, that the deeper we dig this dirt the worse kinds of well-hidden horrors we find. And we get angry and continue fighting. 

Rémmée - Tma

So, TMA/თმა was a poem I wrote when I was trying hard to stay inside the norms. But this French girl had long hair and beautiful collarbones. And her arched back made my head spin. I wrote and wrote. Safely hidden behind my native tongue. My faithful hideaway. 

I barely write songs in Georgian, most of them are English. But then I sang for a Georgian audience and one of my rare Georgian songs, Slow Kisses, was really well received. I’ve just started singing my own songs, so, I’m truly moved to tears.  When I see people singing my songs, I’m just simply stunned. Is it my song? Really? So, I have decided to pay homage to Georgian girls by turning this poem into a song. I sing it for Georgian lesbians out there. Because often, we are still hidden away. 

Now that I have reduced my hideaways to a bare minimum, putting this song out, in broad daylight, is an act of disobedience to moral laws that order us to stay inside the closet. 

So, go and listen. Shhhh. They should hear us!